Blogs

Out of the blue, I got a call from a good old friend of mine Amit Gulati of AGM Technologies.He was a modifier of cars, in the sense he could transform the interiors of a car into one that resembled the private room...

What if I tell you that the combined annual sales for calendar year 2023 of three luxury car brands Mercedes-Benz India, BMW India and Audi India totalled 39511 units? On the other hand, in China and Hong Kong in 20...

On Sunday, September 03, 2023, I got a call from my friend and a senior photo journalist Mohammed Shafiq informing me that Deepangshu Dev Sarmah was no more. He was at that time working with Mobility Outlook, a B2...

What’s with journalists these days? Has journalism changed from being a noble profession to one that is ignoble? It seems that it has become a profession of jokers, extortionists, political stooges and spineless boy...

Electric passenger vehicles (PV) today form a miniscule share of total passenger vehicles sales in the country today. Internal combustion (IC) engine cars and utility vehicles constitute the major share of PV sales ...

For some reason, MG Motor India never brandished its Chinese pride. The reasons were obvious. In India, especially among the politicians and bureaucrats, the word China spells enmity and distrust. No one in India i...

If you may have noticed, small electric cars are becoming a vogue in several developed countries. These are typically two-door cars that can seat four people comfortably. Take the example of Wuling Air mini electric...

In this article, I will try to reason out why we need to love the stray dogs in a very “honest” way. In India, NGOs, animal welfare bodies and individuals go out of their way to help stray dogs lead a decent life on...

The year 2022 has come to an end. The second half of 2022 had its own share of road accidents, some of them extremely fatal, some of them tragic, horrific and scary.

Author Elisabeth Foley has rightly said, “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” And that is precisely what Vikram Kirloskar and Toyota have demonstra...

The U.S. and India have different driving rules. India is a right-driving country (vehicles with the steering wheel on the right side of the car), but don’t let that fool you into believing you won’t run into plenty...

Many decades back, much before I joined the newspapers as a journalist, I remember reading the book titled ‘Iacocca: An Autobiography’. The bestselling book was co-authored by William Novak and was originally publis...

I love it when a random auto journalist in India writes in his column that a high speed car needs to be driven on a race track. Auto journalists are typically that breed of professionals who “run with the hares and ...

Just the other day a leading English newspaper came out with a report quoting a data released by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB). It said that road crashes in India claimed 426 lives per day or 18 every hour...

one needs to wisely choose the right vehicle to avoid any trouble during the trip. Mountains roads can be tricky, which in turn requires that the vehicle is very capable and sturdy.

It’s been several months since I accepted a car or bike “review” invitation. Yes, I miss reviewing new cars and bikes. There is no denying that fact. OEMs continue to shower journalists with free air travel, free 5-...

As I was growing up I loved watching Hindi movies. During the 1980s and 1990s, and perhaps before that too, there was a “Bahadur” character in every other movie who always responded to his master by saying, “Jee Sha...

But all the talk of “Atmanirbhar Bharat” makes no sense if it does not bring in the moolah for the investor. In the early days of post Independence making moolah was very difficult because of the “red-tapism” and co...

Yes, I know auto journalists and the organisations they work for are not rich in the real sense. Auto journalists cannot travel all over the world and drive fancy cars and bikes by spending their own money. No media...

As a B2C auto journalist, I was exposed to the world of glitz. Almost every car and bike launch, besides first drives and rides, meant free five star stays, free flights, free food and wine and at the end of the d...

OEMs are basically manufacturers of cars, two wheelers and other vehicles. I have often asked myself, are OEMs like the Pied Piper of Hamelin in the poem written by Robert Browning. And are we journalists and influe...

In days of yore, #journalists were simple in their outlook, existed on meagre salaries and were there on a mission to bring out the truth. In the 1980s and early 1990s before the television boom, business journalism...

Every time the Auto Expo is held in India, the components players have an Asli Naqli pavilion which displays spurious components along with real ones. The purpose is to educate the consumers of the rampant availabil...

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has passed several orders in the recent past and each need to be criticised for its shortsightedness. It passed an order banning cutting of trees in Delhi. That was ludicrous to say...

They say IITians are smart and savvy and they are good at what they do. Look at what one IITian professor did to the Delhi traffic with his silly Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor plan. After spending hundreds of cro...

I needed a break and I decided to revisit the United States of America. The last time I spent in this fabulous country was 15 years back in the year 2000. Since then the country may have sold millions and trillions ...

Remember the line from the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare? “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. I can truly use that line for India now. There is something very rotten in the state of India. Forget ab...

The Nurburgring was the Holy Grail for car manufacturers to prepare their cars for the worst lap of its life to break each other’s record. Some manufacturers would bring their cars to the track just to develop them,...

Maggi noodles have suddenly become a piece of villainous commodity. In this country of ours we need to find a scapegoat. Once we find that, we all point our fingers at it, yell at it, pounce on it and haul it over t...

It’s easy for any tribunal, whether green or blue, to put a ban on vehicles. Earlier, as per the Motor Vehicles norms in the country, a vehicle life was put at 15 years, beyond which the vehicle needed to be get a f...

Jeremy Clarkson. We all know that this man working for BBC and who hosts the show ‘Top Gear’ has a huge fan following. So does Sunny Leone and Pamella Anderson, at least when her silicon implants were in good order!...

With BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes and Audis getting popular, the need for speed on roads is understandable. These are fast cars and are safe and stable too. But no matter how broad a road you get to drive in India, you sti...

Indians at large possess some of the sharpest brains in the world. But when it comes to following traffic rules, they behave in some of the weirdest ways. India is a country where sex is literally taboo, yet prostit...

Every day we hear someone or the other, thinking of ways to replace the traditional human driver from the car, thus removing driver error from the equation all together which seems like a good idea…in theory. But...

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a clarion call to make India clean (Swatch Bharat), there has been a flurry of activities, both genuine and fraud, trying to heed to his call. Some have honestly taken up...

A new trend going around these days in the auto industry is a feature that goes by the name of ‘driving mode’. This option of a driving mode started with the German luxury manufacturers and is now tricking down to t...