Yearly Archives: 2011

One always associated Ducati with Ferrari.  In fact the two companies celebrate many things together.  However sometime ago in a surprise move Ducati announced that there would be some specific products that would also see the AMG (Mercedes Benz’s tuning division) badging.  The Diavel is one such product now.  The wheel of this Ducati that is based on the Diavel Carbon will feature 10 spoked alloy wheels carrying the AMG logo on them.  The bike will be available in matt black and it will shown to the public at the 64th International Motor Show at Frankfurt.

Picture Courtesy: Autocar India.com

When there were recalls galore happening in the US, people in India were wondering if all the cars manufactured here were perfect or is it that the car manufacturers had a different attitude when it came to the Indian car market.

Honda does not seem to be showing any of this attitude as it has decided to recall 72,115 City cars made between 2005 and 2007. The reason – defective power window switches. The company says that replacement would be made free of cost and individual owners will be contacted regarding this.

This replacement is not limited to the City but it is rather a global recall which includes cars like the Jazz(called the Fit in the US) and the CR-V. But the company did confirm that in India, the City is the only car that has been impacted.

What is interesting to note is that Honda had recalled around 8500 units of the second generation City early last year due to a similar defect.

Eventhough such recalls might lead to negative reviews for the brand as such, they also have a positive impact on the brand image as people’s perception improves regarding the brand’s honesty. With this, the recent price cuts and the soon-to-be launched sub 5 lakh Brio, Honda seems to be playing their cards well in India.

Casey Stoner who seems to running away with the points in the MotoGP world championship this year finds himself in a peculiar position.  In two separate interviews Daniel Pedrosa and Valentino Rossi said things about him which would put the man in a strange position.  Rossi continues to blame Stoner for Ducati’s woes by saying winning three races out of eighteen is no indication of Stoner’s skills to develop a motorcycle.  He feels it is now up to him to make up for that.  On the other hand Dani Pedrosa has shown no remorse in overtaking Stoner for second position at Misano.  His overtake on Stoner closed the gap between Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo by a further five points and so instead of leading Lorenzo by 39 points, Stoner finds himself leading by 34 points thanks to Dani Pedrosa.  Pedrosa has said that he rides for himself and that he is not bothered if Lorenzo or Stoner wins the world championship.  He said he will be happy if Lorenzo wins since the man is his compatriot and that he will also be happy if Stoner wins because Stoner would have won on a bike that he, Pedrosa, had developed.  Poor Stoner.  He seems to have some loss even when he wins.

In the torrential downpour at the Nurburgring, the Kawasaki Racing Team secured its first victory in five years in the hands of Briton Tom Sykes, in the World Superbike series.  However, according to a press release issued by Paul Bird Motorsport who run the Kawasaki factory outfit in WSKB, the services of both Paul Bird Motorsport and Tom Sykes have been terminated for next year.  PBM has been involved in a scandal where in its trucks guns, ammunition and drugs were found at the Italian border when the trucks were on route to Monza.  This coupled with the fact that the outfit has not delivered results in three seasons since its taking over the factory in 2009 seems to be the reason why their services were terminated.  It was the freak weather conditions that gave Kawasaki their victory yesterday and had it been a dry race one can assume the Tom Sykes would not have been anywhere near the front.  Marco Melandri and Randy De Puniet are being considered for Sykes’ seat it is being said.

Tata Motors has steadfastly stood by Narain Karthikeyan be it in any minor racing series or Formula1 racing.  Bharat Petroleum’s Speed brand was also associated with him while he drove for Jordan but later on mounting losses for the oil producing PSUs has seen Speed move out of sponsorship.  Now the new Hero MotoCorp after severing connections with Honda has decided to become a sponsor of Karthikeyan and this has thrown a new line of hope for Narain about his hopes for the next season apart from driving for Team HRT this year at the Indian GP.  Surprisingly the other Indian driver Vicky Chandok has not found any major sponsorship from India.

As the date for the launch of the diesel engined versions of the Etios Sedan and the Liva hatchback are drawing closer there is news that the power output of the 1.4 litre diesel engine will be around 68 PS.  The Etios range will have the same engine as the one in the Toyota Corolla Altis but will feature a fixed geometry turbine instead of the variable geometry one in the Altis.  This engine in the Altis churns out 88 PS.  It is a bit unusual that Toyota has chosen to cut the power output so much.  It is probably to improve fuel economy which is topmost in the minds of diesel car buyers.

Toyota launched the hatchback version of the Etios called the Liva in June and ever since then while the Liva figures are rising there is a corresponding decline in the Etios sedan’s numbers.  In August the Toyota pushed 2816 numbers of the Liva while it did 2708 of the Etios sedan.  However, this could be due to existing stocks with dealers of the sedan version since the figures are those of the number of cars dispatched by the factory.

We had inadvertently made an error in reporting the sales figures of the Tata Nano a couple of days ago.  Please note that the figure should be 1202 and not 3202 as we had reported.  Indiancarsbikes.in has also reported that the Tata Motors boffins have said that these numbers were due to maintenance works at the factory that had shut the production line for fifteen days.  The figures that are presented as sales per month are the number of units that the factory moves to the dealers and not the number of units that the dealers move to customers.

The Beat from Chevrolet features a funky design and though started its sales promisingly found itself sliding down in terms of the number of units sold per month.  Chevrolet have decided to add a diesel engine to the Beat and that seems to have propped up numbers of the Beat again as it managed to move 4676 units.  But this seems to have come at the expense of the Spark whose numbers have fallen to 1297.

The price cut by Honda seems to have done wonders to the City.  The City which had lost its first position in its segment to the Vento and the new Verna from Hyundai has reclaimed that spot with a vengeance in August.  It sold 5819 units to the Verna’s 4211   and the Vento’s 3019.  And all this without a diesel engine which the other two cars have. What is surprising is the difference margin.  So what about the hypothesis that Honda needs diesel engines in order to remain competitive?