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Elegant Ebony

NRI Goan ALLWYN SIQUEIRA virtually knew how many pot-holes were there on the road from Campal to Assonora. But when he and his wife Rita bought a Tata Indica LXI car during their recent visit to Goa, they began wondering where the pot-holes had gone.

WE had been exposed to the Tata Indica Lxi car. However, when we purchased one during our recent visit to Goa, the vehicle proved a real dream to drive (by small car standards). The comfort it offered was comparable to those in the mid-car segment (IKON, Siena, etc.). Once you are behind the wheel of the LXi, the negative points are thrown straight out the window.

The power-train of the LXi is a 1400cc Tata 475SI beast, delivering 75 ponies which can be felt once the engine has been cranked. It's packed very well under the bonnet and the beast makes itself heard when it comes alive at the turn of the key. Stepping inside the car, you can almost feel the power at your disposal and on the open roads, speeds of 120 km/hr are un-noticeably achieved.

You can hardly hear any outside noise in the cabin and the air-conditioning
(full HVAC) is quite powerful and more than adequate to cool the interior. The rear passengers will be the first to initiate reduction of the blower (the maximum setting I used was 3). Overtaking other cars was a snip. Once down-shifted, you could feel the car screaming to be thrust forward and with a gentle push of the accelerator, you can leave most of the other cars lagging far behind. Progressive driving habits play a vital role on Goan roads as there are umpteen obstacles that one has to manoeuvre around.

INDIA'S DOING FINE

The Indian car industry has surely come a long way from the days of the 'Ambassador' and the 'Fiat'. Indian car manufacturers are producing increasingly better variants of their cars after listening to customer response, a trait that never used to be taken seriously in India. Cars with foreign collaboration are plentiful on Indian roads. Admittedly, these cars are quite good. The reasons, however, behind our selection are due to the fact the car was available in black colour, and it possessed more sporty looks compared to other cars. Having said that, Ford India have just announced their 'panther black' SXi IKON, and the Opel's 'Corsa' is now also available in black.

ACCESSORIES

Thanks to a car-accessory place in Panjim (Impact), we managed to get quite a few extras like fog-lamps, a dog-horn (which really scares the hell out of people), chrome door handles, wood effect centre arm-rest and console, remote alarm with auto-engage (including auto window wind-up), etc. From Kuwait, we carried with us the chrome exhaust, emergency engine starter (in case the radio drained the battery), night-rider strip light (just under the front grille), door graphics and the sound-system. N D Naik, the Telco dealer, fitted the Neo alloy wheels, deluxe car mats, front and rear mud-flaps and cushioned seat covers.

SOUND

The sound system that we installed generates a hefty power of 300W RMS. At peak power we can easily achieve 800W, which is far too much for the ears to handle. The front end comprises an Alpine head-unit providing the pre-out to a Kenwood 4-channel Power Amplifier, mounted in the rear boot. The 12" active Kenwood Subwoofer is also mounted in the boot along-with the power amplifier. A custom-carpeted shelf (MDF & Foam) in place of the rear parcel-tray holds the rear sound-stage that is made up of 2, 6"x9" Alpine Drivers housed in custom Radio Shack enclosures damped with pillow foam.

The front sound-stage comprises 2 full-range 4" Kenwood speakers housed in the dashboard. Also mounted in the front are 2 Alpine piezo-firing drivers mounted on the dashboard via a passive cross-overs from the Head-Unit. 2 Alpine 5.25" bass radiators were fitted to the front door cavities and these made a dramatic improvement to the bass the front end generated. In between the rear Alpines was mounted the 6-disc Alpine auto-changer and contrary to popular belief, the CDs in the changer never skipped even once (that too on Goan pot-holed terrain). To add more spice to the sound, a Kenwood sound processor was fitted on the dash that provided ideal sound equalisation and also discrete control for the rear Kenwood sub-woofy.

The sound was mind-blowing and those who had the privilege to hear the sound (even from a distance) said that they had never heard anything like this. Interconnects for the entire set-up were done via gold monster cables and via the intelligent Alpine Ai-net connectors. This provided clean and crisp signals to the hardware with virtually no loss of quality in sound reproduction.

There are far too many pictures of our LXi (interior or exterior), but if you are keen in taking a look at these, please send me an email at "Siqueira, Allwyn." <siqueira@bp.com> . There are also a few digital videos (thanks to the Sony Cyber-Shot) of the car and these files are a little larger than the digital pictures (approx 500K each).

Allwyn Siqueira