I never thought such a fate awaited me when I boarded the mother ship. Actually, I was happy to be born a Honda CR-V – man,you should have seen the way they created me. Every bit of me was meticulously assembled, my body treated to umpteen coats, my engine thoroughly tested and mostimportantly, my brain tested for everything short of AI. Even I was impressed seeing my own reflection in the glass-lined inspection room at the end of the assembly line. The metallic green paint was not my choice and I envied my other CR-V mates in solid whites and some shades of red. But I did like my slightly inset clear lens eyes. My clothes fitted me well and I thought I managed to look healthy, yet not overweight – yes, I do have a bit of a flab around me, but the guy who gave me a final polish job seemed to love it in my curves. Then a strange thing happened. He pulled out a sticker and that read India! What? I thought, and more so since I was a right hand drive model, that I would be sold to some caring hand in the domestic Japanese market and instead, my destiny was to serve a lifetime in India!
I was given protective covers and driven up to this ship, along with thousands of my kind – those bound for USA were obviously happy and some bound for the African continent not so. I had mixed emotions running through my ECU – maybe I will find a caring owner in India who would pamper me a lot and take me out only for city outings. After landing in Mumbai, I was sent in a dark and murky truck to Noida where I saw my Indian-born cousins, the City and Accord – some of them cribbed to me about how bad roads can get in this country and I could see them getting jealous seeing my ground clearance. Then it was another long journey to ARAI where I was thrashed left, right and centre around a terrible track. Some of the engineers looked perplexed at my build quality and at the fact that their equipment was not qualified to handle my memory. Despite the terrible treatment, I won the day for Honda India when I passed the homologation tests with flying colours –now, maybe they will retire me from road duty and assign me to the company foyer; after all, I was the first CR-V in India, right? No such luck. Back at Noida they cleaned me up and sent me for a formal launch of the CR-V model in the country. I loved all the attention, you see; after all who doesn’t like to be photographed? But my fame lasted only a bit longer than the proverbial fifteen minutes.
The next day I was handed over to a magazine team. Don’t know whether they thought I was a crude Hummer or what, but they put me through some tests, the details of which I cannot publish in a family magazine. Tell me, how can they compare me with a V6 powered Suzuki Vitara? But I did fare well, it seems, and I did show my hatch to the Subaru Forester which someone has wrongly badged ‘Chevrolet’ in this country. I won that group test, to sum things up. The next lot was equally exuberant and despite my brilliant showing on and off the road, they managed to crash me. I was all scarred and mind you, being a CBU import meant that even Honda India took their own sweet time for spares and panels to be flown in. Hope none of my CR-V friends go through the fate of being stuck in a service station for a month for want of parts. The day I was released after extensive plastic surgery, I was let out to, you guessed it right, another bunch of motoring hacks. I only hope they treat me well this time out.
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