Being a bit of a fanatic that I am about things that shout technology, I have a lot more respect for analog stuff than digital. Digitisation has made that binary code reading process way more complex than it should have. It reminds me of a time when you had reliability getting more prominence than power, prestige, etc. One of my friends, whose car I am going to talk about, keeps talking about the Mercedes Benz W124 or the 90-00s E-Class. He keeps talking about how the only one thing he would need to change in it is wiring harness, if it ever needs changing. It was difficult to understand his point at once, but his car got this point to me quite nicely.
He owns a Maruti Baleno, also known to people around the world as either Cultus Crescent, Cultus, Cassia or Esteem(!). Now, it is not the best of the cars by today’s standards and that is understandable. However, there is something so right about it that I feel homely in that car. The steering is a bit on the heavier side as it is a hydraulic power-assisted steering instead of our now-popular electric power-assisted steering systems. It has automatic climate control A/c, something rare from the time it was on retail, at least as far as mass market cars are concerned. It is not a fleet-footed a car as you may think but can do sporting duties with ease, only if there were more track days to witness its prowess. Its engine has been mated to a nice gearbox. The shifter though, reminds me of how I wanted to drive a car with such a shifter, with us folks in India not really acquainted with things like pistol-grip shifter and like back in its time (at least not me). I still feel I could take that stick shifter out and put it in a today’s car after some modifications.
I have fond memories of times when we did not have Hyundai coming up with flamboyant cars (style-wise) and they were instead ugly concoctions in the name of cars. It was a time when the Maruti 800 was still not reduced to some memory and the guys at Suzuki were thinking pondering on a concept called Kizashi. It was a time when I was still thinking of the Baleno Altura as the car to have, something I have had the chance to change in myself quite recently.
Yes, we are living in great times and things are getting better every passing day. But the soon to be ‘antiques’ are the kind that make you realise just what have you missed out on. There are replacements for a vinyl record player but the quality does not match that of a gramophone. Similarly, there are cars better than Baleno when it comes to technology but few better it when it comes to giving the driving enjoyment. Have you been able to feel that you can take it easy on the road in top gear and not have to worry about traffic or fuel consumption that much with today’s cars? I am sure you would feel the same if you were to drive anything like a Maruti Baleno or the Baleno itself.
Technology, Automobiles, etc. 