The Beat Diesel Test Drive

Though this review comes after a long while, it carries with it some salient points about the Chevrolet Beat which is now in an improved version with a diesel heart and much unlike its predecessor where some key areas are concerned. It was a sweltering hot winter afternoon in Bangalore when I decided to take up the test drive for this car. Briefly I will take you over with the process so you may understand this car all the way from the dealership perspective upto the drive itself.

Dealerships

Firstly and interestingly a google search for Chevy dealers in Bangalore throws up only three results which are shown below:

Kropex India Ltd
Address:49/1 Singasandara, Hosur Main Road, Bangalore.,
Bangalore, Karnataka, 560068

Phone: 080-43574357 / 09663388830 / 9663388812
Fax: 080-43574353

Email: kropex.sales@gmidealer.com

Sundaram Motors
Address:P.B.No 5358,107, Kasturba Road, Bangalore.,
Bangalore, Karnataka, 560001

Phone: 080 – 22070709 – 13 / 22070751 – 3 / 9880631313

Email: sundaram2.sales@gmidealer.com

Trident Chevrolet
Address:No.122/1, C. Shankar Reddy Layout, Kalyan Nagar Outer Ring Road, Bangalore.,
Bangalore, Karnataka, 560043

Phone: 080- 43430500

Email: tridentban.service@gmidealer.com

Upon visiting Kasturba road for a different reason which i will come to in a different post, I found that the Sundaram GM dealership was under lock and key and they seemed to have moved elsewhere. While I did not care to check, I also knew the Outer Ring Road showroom was a mere showroom of a very small size without any servicing options. I do remember there was one on Mahadevapura Main Road leading to whitefield, but it was somehow conspiciously missing from out here in this list above !! Since the Singasandra one was near my home, I reached there after informing apriori that I would be there.

Cars in the showroom

The showroom itself is impressive with an entire range of cars put up there under the Chevry Umbrella starting from the barebones Spark upto the Fully loaded Captiva. The Sail sedan and hatch are yet to make it even to showrooms as they were just recently showcased at the auto expo in Delhi.

A friendly supervisor let me meddle with all cars including the Cruze until the test drive itself was ready. One thing that struck me immediately was that all Chevy cars were low in seating much like yours truly Honda. Somehow I think these are not suitable with back problems for easy ingress/egress. The Beat thankfully was a bit more supportive of the driver if not necessarily the passenger.

Chevy Beat

Beat Multimedia Colours mm gal 1 2011 992x325 07

(Image courtesy: www.chevrolet.co.in)

As we already know, the petrol Beat has been doing its rounds for a year or more now so many people already know the cockpit internals of the car along with a billion digital meters and displays. So its worthwhile just dwelling into the new diesel and outlining its good points and pitfalls. My test drive was about 3-4 kms which included great highway roads, congested city roads, broken gravel roads, ditches and road humps, curves and straight lines and some U-turns. This was a clear representation of what a test drive must be like. So how did the Beat Diesel perform? Read on!

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Aircel 3G launch and pricing, launched in chennai

It seems like Aircel is busy updating its website for the 3G launch before world cup cricket matches begin. As of today morning their website is completely down with the browser returning this message:

ScreenHunter 03 Feb

 

It would be interesting to see how Aircel places its tariff plans in competition to the already existing 3G services from Tata Docomo and Airtel.

UPDATE: Aircel 3G has been launched in chennai since yesterday and the first 250 MB for the next one week is FREE. However Aircel has not updated its website on the pricing yet. This means they are buying some time to first see how much load their servers take up and how 3G performs before stating the pricing. Bangalore still is waiting for this service though along with other circles.

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The phenomenon – part two

I noticed this article from the times of india, which captured the essence of Koramangala through the mind of Balbir Singh, the owner of Koramangala.com.

Around 17 years ago, Koramangala was nothing short of a pocket of villages. For every small purchase, we had to drive down to Brigade Road. Instances where a Koramangalite would go outdoors after 7 pm were sparse. It was unsafe and autorickshaw drivers always refused to come to Koramangala. This place was dead," says Balbir Singh, who quit his job in the printing & packaging industry to launch the portal koramangala.com along with his wife Amrit Sethi.

Way back in 1984, if someone went out after 7pm, there was no guarantee of him returning home be it a kid or an adult. The biggest set of marshy land regions included what is now the National Games Village, and ST Bed (behind the Maharaja hotel).  Everything beyond that were just groves and groves of cocount trees which could trap an unassuming individual if he trespassed into an unending maze of no-return. From our home, we could see the Mantons crane factory (today otherwise called Raheja Arcade), and St.John’s hospital. While the first five years of my stay did not see anyone owning a television set in Koramangala, after that stage the first few black and white sets started arriving on the scene. Chitrahaar, Chitramanjari, Vartegalu, Blockbuster movies, and the famous moon mission by Rakesh Sharma – were some of the things that raked in crowds. Hordes of children descended on the only house(s) that had TVs and settled down like we were one family, with one goal – watch TV.

Open spaces, tall grasses, St John’s Hospital, service roads and, yes, cows. Nobody thought this quiet suburb would be transformed so much. It was more like a brick & mortar village with the typical ration shops around it," recollects Santhosh Kumar, an HR professional, who has been residing in Koramangala since 1984

The Koramangala club membership was a near miss for my father. To keep up the socializing habit, the membership was offered at a mere 500 bucks which those days amounted to a monthly salary of people living there. The founder members had to pitch in about 2000 bucks each with which they would build what is otherwise today called the Koramangala Club with a mind boggling membership amount running into lakhs of rupees.

The entire set of people living in Koramangala 6th Block used to play badminton, shuttle, ring, kho-kho and what not and this included all the adults in each family. Boy, it was such a pleasure to be living here. After my dad, I was the next undisputed badminton champ out here. The next ten years was sheer bliss upto 1995. The locality slowly gained ground in terms of development, and infrastructure to support the growing population was slowly being put in place. Post offices, schools, bus stops, banks, water tanks, electricity board offices, small shops to meet the grocery needs.

Some of the famous names to do business with were Krishna medicals, Vaishnavi stores for stationery (and those new famous pens and pencils), fashion center (for your clothing needs), modern stores and balaji stores (for groceries). The only good hotels years down the line were Sukh sagar, and Utsav Veg. Bethany and Neena schools were the only schools that have withstood the test of time for over 25 years now. So much so was the nostalgia that I can say I could reach my school as the crow flies (diagonally) from my home.

1995 was ushering in the software era, into india, into bangalore, into koramangala in full swing. This was the turning point for the poshness of the locality to start exposing itself. In full glory. for the next ten years. Few of the earliest names to move into Koramangala were Wipro and Infosys.

The phenomenon was now being created.

Suman Tirumalasetti, RCB’s new headache and India’s next Tendulkar

Going by the way RCB played their innings, piling up 75 runs in the last five overs, no one would have expected Deccan Chargers to put an a valiant fight. But knowing that the pitch was a batting pitch one would have still expected good amount of fireworks. And Deccan Chargers did not disappoint in any way. Symonds and Suman put up a partnership which turned into unlimited entertainment for the crowd. It was a full paisa vasool for the day. While the K-Squared couple drove RCB’s scores, the S-Squared couple finished RCB into oblivion.

 

Source : Deccan chronicle

What one has to keenly notice here is the fact that Suman is now the emerging threat to many other IPL teams leave alone RCB. And on another front, he is a potential no-nonsense batsman for India when they play other countries the next world cup. His knocks were no less than brilliant while DC were under immense scoring pressure requiring over 11 to 12 runs an over. From then on it was no looking back for Suman. His calmness and composure on the field, his eyes always keen to spot the ball, his precision of his decisions on directions to hammer each ball thrown at him, shows the sure qualities of a batting superstar in the making. With Sachin Tendulkar as his icon, Suman is no less than the master blaster himself in terms of the high standards he exhibits on the field. The match was poised to be a win for RCB and Suman’s only motto was to turn that situation around. Irrespective of the type of bowler and the bowling style and speed Suman always had atleast one new place to send the ball to all around the field.

Its finally heartening to see a young guy take on Tendulkar’s traits and who knows one day he would break all records yet another time! Finally South India is seeing the emergence of yet another great batsman, who has nothing but finesse in his working style! Congratulations to you Suman on today’s brilliant performance, and needless to say, you will have much more in store for hungry fans in future! Good luck DC and Suman!!