Instant Words : The Sunday that I Bolted!

I, among a few other bloggers, received an invite from Blogadda on behalf of Tata Motors to join them for a drive to Lonavala from Bandra Kurla Complex, a distance of around 120kms so that I could experience their latest hatchback Tata Bolt.

We met at Café Infinito on the 19^th morning at 7.30am for a sumptuous breakfast, a briefing about

the car and the route that we would take to ensure that we could experience a variety of road surfaces.

We were divided into teams and each team, of 3 bloggers and a representative of Blogadda, was allocated a car each. We were allocated the Tata Bolt with a Revotron 1.2T engine. Let me at the outset make it clear that my opinion of the car will be that of a ‘user’ and not a technical one.

The exterior was pretty much like that of any hatchback. Did not excite. But the interior, as we sat in, proved to be very comfortable. I sat in the rear seat and the legroom was impressive.

Then came the most impressive part – the Harman infotainment system. It can play music from the Radio, USB or via Bluetooth connectivity. That is not all. It has a touchscreen and responds to voice commands as well to control the A/C or any other functions that have been enabled. There is more, yes. It also has smartphone enabled navigation with MapMyIndia maps! So with our route fed in, we set out! This car engine has 3 modes that can be used for optimum fuel utilisation – Eco, City and Sports, depending on where and how you drive.

The 1^st stop was at MMRDA grounds to show how wonderful the suspension was. We were given a ‘connect the dots’ chart and I had to connect the dots while the car moved over rough patches on a laid out track with a small stretch of rumbler strips too. You can see the results for yourself in the video shot by Anuja from Blogadda.

Then we had a great comfortable ride with Disha Kotak at the wheel who was testing out all the

different modes of the engine and Ekta was in total command of the Infotainment system playing music that we requested and also navigating all the way! The comfort level at the rear was indeed very high.

The 1^st pitstop was at the Food Mall after the 1^st toll booth at Khalapur on the Mumbai Pune expressway where I replaced Disha at the wheel and Disha decided to grab 40 winks.

From there on to Triose Plaza for lunch was a short distance but I enjoyed it though I felt that it was not very responsive in higher gears while the torque was great at the lower end which was a great help as there was no need to change gears constantly while negotiating traffic on the ghats. Disha slept like a baby in the rear seat. It was so comfortable.

Post lunch we got to exchange our cars and our team got the much powerful Quadrajet 1.3 diesel Bolt. It was a breeze driving her up the curves to Tigers point in Lonavala where we had the mandatory selfies.