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You know it's a hit when a regular Mumbai cabbie musters the courage to walk up to you at the petrol pump and ask you 'Does it actually give 25 kpl?' This was just hours after I had picked up the car and I gave him a rather puzzled look, before I mumbled something to the effect of 'Er... don't know!'
You see, it's exactly the very same curiosity that bit me as well when I first asked Tata Motors for a test car – can it really do 25 kpl? To answer your question straight away – no, it can't, unless you are sitting in a controlled environment, with the car on a dyno running at a constant 45-50 kph. In the real world, the best we could summon the 1.4-litre common-rail diesel to achieve was 20.8 kpl on the highway, which isn't far off from Tata Motors' own claim. And in the city, we saw a little under 17 kpl – that too in horrible peak-hour Mumbai traffic. These figures by themselves are impressive enough to warrant a further explanation, unless of course you would still like to wait patiently for a Nano diesel.
Globally, the concept of an efficient version of an existing small car isn't new. Ford does that with the Focus 1.6 eDrive and Volkswagen with the Blue Motion versions of the Polo and Golf to name a few. All of them have minor changes to the exterior and mechanical changes to help improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions.
Read on ->
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