Zooming down the Bombay-Pune Expressway at speeds in excess of 150km/h is the stuff fairy tales are made of. If someone else is paying for the fuel, it transforms itself rather effortlessly into quite a cost-effective fairy tale too. No fairy tale – from Mr India to Cinderella and the thirteen dwarves to Aladin and the eleventy terrorists – can be complete without a villain. There is a villain in this case too; the New Tata Safari DICOR. Explanations are due. Here goes…

The Safari advert: the car going all sideways, muck flying all around in generous measure, and that soulful voice asking you to ‘reclaim your life’, rather than sit in front of the idiot box and watch the ad. I don’t know about you – leave a comment and I’d find out – I found that ad compelling. It made me think about buying a Tata Safari if I had the kind of money. In today’s day and age, to make the consumer consider one’s product is half the battle won. So the Safari had won half the battle. And it had a battery of loyal fans from the late 1990’s – the time when the Safari was launched in the country as India’s first SUV. Add that to the equation and the Safari had won much more than half the battle. What about the rest?

It had to give in to that all-sweeping common rail revolution that’s sweeping across the diesel world, in the process sweeping people off their feet with some fantastically enjoyable diesel cars. In case you’re starting to jump up and down in your seat (or/and salivating) at the prospect of a heady common rail diesel in the Safari that will propel you to mind-numbing speeds on tarmac, err…settle down there. Sit down please, at the back there. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a no-show.

I want to start with the most annoying parts. Why? Well, this happens to be my blog. So shut up and listen. The door handles and brakes are suspiciously related in many ways. Yes, you read that right. Neither works. Neither works, that is, till you lose patience and give up. And then they kick in with a deadly vengeance. In case of the door handles, the matter is rather trivial. It is ok if they don’t work. You keep pulling the door handle, it refuses to open. You pull it some more, it doesn’t give way. And then one last yank with a generous splash of expletives, and clack opens the door. In case of the brakes, the matter assumes serious proportions. Pesky cyclist on the highway veers suddenly 100m ahead of you. You jab at the brakes. Nothing sir, this is a Tata. Cyclist is now 50m away, some panic is setting in. You kick the brakes harder than before. They’re still sleeping. Cyclist is now 20m away – and you can smell the eucalyptus oil in his hair – oblivious of the two tonne plus mass that is hurtling at him at an unmentionable speed. Last attempt then, palms have gone sweaty, forehead has gone beady, heart is supplying blood from within the mouth. You muster up as much strength as there is in those sedentary thighs and calves and give it one hard boot. They wake up, yawn, wonder why you’re being so nastily rude with them, and then decide to bring the car to a stop. Yes, they disturb ABS too, who was yet involved in a thrilling game of silicone chess with the traction control system and the airbag deployment system.

While the brakes and door handles are involved in a generous display of sibling affection on one side, on the other – inside the hood, it’s a different game of one-upmanship that is starting to gather force. The air-conditioning system on the Safari reckons that the winter sun is getting a bit too harsh for its comfort. It promptly shuts down. It has every right to, it’s a Tata. Starter bits are not one bit pleased. They think that they’re being dealt an unfair deal, what with having to deal with a crazy bunch of motoring journos who make it expend considerable effort to get the monumental (?) 2956cc motor to life. Every ten minutes, mind you. Starter bits think that if the AC can decide to go on a strike, they can flit in and out of automotive coma as and when they please. Which they do. Who is to stop them? Me? No, well I tried peering under the gigantic hood – trust me, it’s so massive, it’s got hydraulic arms to lift up the bonnet – all I saw was a few plastic compartments in varying shades of white, all covered in plastic caps of wonderfully youthful hues. There was also a massive cover-plate that screamed ‘DICOR’. All that marketing acronym wizardry on paper makes me go a little weak in the knees. Inside the car, in flesh and blood, it made my pupils dilate at 3600rpm; which coincidentally happens to be the redline of this massive, lazy pushrod engine. That is not the point though. Suddenly, life was a haze, and in the haze, I thought it was best to let the engine compartment be at peace with itself.

Those things are quite bad. And in a fourteen lakh rupee car, they’re unforgivable. I mean, think of it. What can you do with fourteen lakh rupees? You can buy a Honda Accord after throwing in a lakh or so more (if you’re spending that kind of money, a lakh or two here and there scarcely makes a difference). You can buy a Sonata Embera, which, in spite of being an Accord clone, is a rather nice-looking, nice-feeling and nice-driving car. You can get yourself a Skoda Octavia RS. It’s a petrolheads dream, and it’s turbocharged. It’ll hit 212km/h in a jaw-dropping blur of trees, rocks and tar all around. Plus, it will average close to fourteen kilometres to a litre in the city. Impressive eh? But if you insist on an SUV, for whatever reason you do, go buy yourself – and I hate to say this – a Ford Endeavour (kill me, Lord). The less said the better.

The Safari has a couple of strengths. But I won’t bother listing them down here. Because I don’t need to. This is my blog and not a magazine (haha, cheap thrills), and I can afford to be downright mean. Anyway, I so do want to love the Safari. I want to love it for the respect I have for Tata Motors. C’mon it’s been less than a decade since the Tata’s got serious about graduating to passenger cars from trucks and tempos. To their credit, they’ve come up with some swashbuckling cars (ok, not really, the Indica is not a casanova car, the Indigo, even less so), and they’re now the second largest auto manufacturer in India. No mean feat this, considering that in automotive timelines, ‘less than a decade’ is equivalent to a few minutes.

There, then. I want to go off-roading in the Safari. I want to go sideways. I want to love it. I want to spend fourteen lakh rupees and convince myself that it’s good value for money. Like that – “Calm down young man. The fourteen lakh that you donate to Tata Motors this day of 2005 will all flow into their R&D wing. In many ways, it’ll help Tata Motors traverse the steep learning curve quickly and smoothly. When your son buys a Tata twelvety seven years from now, he won’t have to worry about eccentric door handles or slumbering brakes. Peace, young man. Peace!”

But I can’t. Because it’s a bloody bad car. Period.