If you are an automobile buff, chances are you’ve grown accustomed to religiously tuning in to NDTV’s The Car and Bike Show on weekends and have at some point watched series past and present like Autobahn, A Very Ferrari Summer, Another Ferrari Summer, Love, Life & Lamborghini and Freewheeling. The common thread running through all these? Siddharth Vinayak Patankar, the NDTV Group’s Auto Editor. We recently caught up with the popular anchor — here’s what he had to say:
Tell us how it all started, the passion for automobiles.
Like most kids growing up, my room’s walls were covered with auto posters. In those days, we did not have the Internet and info was not easily accessible, so laying my hands on a magazine or poster was all the more exciting.
Are you a car person or a bike person?
In Indian conditions, a car offers you a chance of leisure. Once you get into the car, you are cocooned in your own world with all the traffic and bad roads left outside.
Hosting The Car and Bike Show.
It’s been a very interesting journey, hardly feels like six years! We were the first to showcase the design process, international automobile headquarters, manufacturing units and auto shows. The biggest challenge of any show is to put it together in a way that appeals to a varied audience, and we’ve done that.
The most reliable Indian car would be?
With today’s competition levels no one can afford to launch a substandard car, so nothing really sticks out. This change was brought about by Hyundai’s arrival a decade ago. Till then
Indian customers were taken for granted and ACs, body colour bumpers, mirrors on the left and so on were novelties. Then overnight, cars offering great value for money and reliability came in, forcing even the big daddy of Indian roads, Maruti, to make changes.
2009’s hottest looking cars and bikes.
The Kawasaki Ninja 250R, cool looking and competitively priced (compared to other sports bikes); the Bullet Classic 500, retro looks that reflect the Indian legacy of biking; the Chevrolet Cruze, aggressive European styling; Fiat Linea, very neat looker.
One thing you would like to change about Indian roads.
The infrastructure needs to improve, but that’s not in our hands. What we can change is our attitudes. We are so impatient, leading to a complete disregard for rules. If only each of us could be more patient, driving would be a much more pleasurable experience.
Launches to look forward to in 2010.
The hatchback is the segment to watch. There’ll be the Skoda Yeti that is a very interesting choice for Indian roads, where you want power, but not bulk. Then there’ll be Toyota’s small car and we all expect so much from this brand. On the whole, 2010 will see the highway-worthy hatch taking root in the country.
Catch The Car and Bike Show on NDTV 24x7 at 4.30 pm on Saturdays and 11.30 pm on
Sundays.
