[Mystic]

I am new to Team-BHP and this is my first post besides my initial introduction.

Tryst with automobiles:

1. I am recently retired from consulting career with Govt of India research projects and SAP consulting with MNCs like Deloitte, IBM and SAP after almost 4 decades as a Principal Consultant. This basically means that I had spent almost 6 decades with various generations of automobiles as a child to retirement.

2. In my consulting career across many industry verticals from nuclear plants to oil refineries, I had an opportunity to work in 3 automobile related industries. One is at AM General in South Bend, Indiana, USA where I was sitting in the production plant seeing Humvees being produced. The 2nd was at the world’s biggest Lexus dealer‘s workshop in Dubai, UAE. The third was Finnish vehicle contract manufacturer and supplier for the development and production of battery systems for EV vehicles.

3. My first tryst with automobiles actually started when we moved to Nigeria in early 1970s with my father (Chief Engineer, Roads and Buildings) who was deputed from India to Nigeria to build their roads infrastructure as both are common wealth countries. Nigeria was a rich OPEC nation in early 70s when 1 Naira was 2.5 USD and now 1 Naira is equal to 0.1 INR. This means that common people could afford to buy exotic automobiles in those days.

4. I was overwhelmed to see so many exotic cars after having seen only 2 models in India, Ambassador and Premier Padmini.

5. Let me elaborate on the cars I grew up as a child with my father driving in early 1970s:

a. Mercedes 220 : My father’s official chauffeur driven Govt Car. As a child, I was introduced to this German engineering master piece. I also had an experience of being driven in other high end Mercedes cars of my father’s colleagues. All these German cars had some unique engineering features in each model which were a piece of engineering perfection.

b. Plymouth Avenger : This is our first personal car. Do not mistake this as the larger American Plymouth cars. This particular one was imported from UK.

c. Morris Marina : This is our 2nd car we bought after we had a terrible accident with our Plymouth when all 6 members of our family were in the car and we all walked out from the windshield with no injuries. We had many long drives in this station wagon which was very convenient to carry lot of luggage.

d. VW Beetle : This Red colour car with engine in the back was a powerful car and used by my father when he needs to move to construction sites alone without family.

6. Cars driven by me as an adult in early 2000s:

a. Mercedes C 200 Kompressor : This particular one I owned was a sports edition with high profile tyres and a star on the bonnet. I personally feel that this is best looking automobile on this planet and this title still holds good in 2023 for an early 2000s model.

b. Rental Chevy Impala (USA): This particular rental vehicle was my favourite . Very comfortable and a beautiful Sedan. In rental car world, I used to book a mid-size car and by default, Hertz used to upgrade to large car as I am a frequent user of rental cars due to my consulting career which requires me to hire a rental car every week for many decades. In this process, I had my hand at almost every kind of popular rental cars out there like Camry, Accord etc. Sometimes, I had no choice but to pick up a sports convertible car like Mustang which I was not comfortable to drive after long red eye flights from coast to coast in USA.

Ownership of two automobiles in India

1. 2009 November Mahindra Scorpio VLX micro hybrid : This car was the chosen one after I relocated from Silicon Valley of USA to Silicon Valley of India. The main reason why I bought this car was the build quality as it is built like a tank. With the accidents prevalent on Indian roads, I wanted to sit in a car which would give me another chance at life just in case. As I was relocated officially by my company, I had booked a container and brought even the trash can from USA to India. But the biggest challenge was on how to bring my left-hand steering Mercedes to India. I did hurried research and did not have time to take decisions on the swapping of steering to right and the cost involved etc. with customs duty in India. I finally sold the Mercedes and after the poor forex rates in those days, I could manage to get a 120 hp car with cruise controls under 11 lakhs. Even though I am happy on my relocation but my son did not become comfortable with Indian education system and he went back to USA to become one of the youngest PhD in CS-AI-NLP and faculty member in one of the top 5 universities in USA.

Ownership experience with Scorpio especially black colour was great as it automatically commands prestige and presence on the road. The only drawback was that this 2009 November edition was a BS3 with no air bags. I used to feel very uncomfortable at high speeds due to high center of gravity and body roll etc. The car comes with a large MID, built in TPMS and auto dimming mirror with LED warnings from sensors in the mirror when reversing the car. The electric windows never worked correctly from the day 1 of delivery. This was not rectified in 12 years of my ownership by service technicians. I believe that it is a wrong engineering design and it was a common issue with all owners in general in those days.

I changed all tyres and battery every 4 years irrespective of the number of kilometers I drove. I strongly feel that tyres must be replaced every 5 years.
I hardly used the micro hybrid functionality of the car as it is mostly used on highways and rarely in city traffic conditions.

When I sold the vehicle after 12 years, the car was looking like in show room condition. The main reasons for selling is that it is nearing 15 years end of life diesel vehicle and I wanted a modern car with low center of gravity with 7 air bags in which I feel comfortable driving at high speeds.

2. 2021 November Crysta Z Automatic Diesel: I initially booked XUV 7OO in the first few minutes of the opening of bookings but was disappointed by the waiting period of 6 months and hence cancelled the booking and lost some money in the process. After a lot of follow ups, finally could get my deposit back minus the 10% cut by Mahindra.
After a lot of research on Team-BHP, finally decided to go for the top end Crysta. I think it is one of the last automatic Diesels ever manufactured by Toyota. I booked a garnet red color and it looks like there is a waiting period of 3 months for such colors. The dealer told me that there is a super white color ready in stock and can be delivered immediately . I decided to go ahead and take delivery with cash before my mind wanders into some other car. I never realized that I would end up paying 32 lakhs on road price in Bangalore with 360-degree cameras installed by dealer. I was a bit skeptical at 17-inch tyres as there was a lot of noise on how Toyota stopped 17 inches after lot of issues by owners and went back to 16-inch tyres. I even asked the dealer to replace my car with 16-inch tyres. The dealer told me that Toyota has fixed this problem permanently and nothing to worry. So far, no issues with 17 inch tyres in my car.
The 360-degree camera was a great accessory to get fitted by the dealer as Crysta is a long car and it helps during the parking at tight places and also automatically gets activated when turning on the Left and Right signals. The only temporary issue I faced is when I disconnected the negative battery terminal during my frequent abroad trips, the 360-camera stopped working when I connected battery back on my return. It gets activated after a couple of days by itself. I still do not know why this happens. It happened to me at least 5 times. It also records all the active video in flash drive. I had also installed after market external TPMS in Crysta as I got used to seeing this on my previous Scorpio for a decade as a factory fitted equipment.
I never really had any issues with DPF regeneration so far which happens like clockwork in Toyota and not surprised on how his new technology has been perfected by Toyota. For non BS6 Diesel owners, this DPF funda is hard to understand especially when the regeneration starts just before you reached your destination and wanted to stop the engine. Even though filling AdBlue is usually done at service centre every 10K Kms, sometimes the service centre would return the unused liquid back to you. One has to be careful in self filling this liquid as it is corrosive and needs to be handled carefully. I booked the free service after 5K Kms and the service centre told me Toyota needs service only once in 10K Kms. You can clearly see the Japanese efficiency at local Indian service centres. The only draw back is too many fleet cars at service centre. Initially, I wondered on how Toyota is selling 6 K Crystas every month with a 3 million INR price. It is worth every rupee you spend. Every part in Crysta works perfectly as it is designed to be and it is impossible to find a niggle in Japanese cars.

My personal opinion on why Crysta was good choice I made out of many options out there:

• All-important Govt Officers are given white Crysta as an official car. Why Government has taken this decision of color and model is that it is a no-nonsense car and it commands respect by its presence and size.
• All fleet owners would want Crysta in their fleet as it a work horse which would work for a million miles without any issues economically with minimal maintenance charges.
• All celebrities have this car as a must pocession beside their other luxury cars so that they can sneak into public without notice in the same comfortable ride as any other luxury car.


Travelogue of one 2K kms long drive in Crysta:

Even though I have seen more than 2 dozen countries with a consulting career which requires me to travel frequently, I have not really explored much of India. This long pending desire became a reality on July 1st 2023 Saturday, the first day after a long last working day on Friday 30th June, 2023 on which I took volunteer retirement.

What better place to visit than the place in which I have done my engineering at Andhra University Engineering College in Visakhapatnam 4 decades back. I started at 6 am on Saturday morning with family fully loaded on a 1000 km drive from Bangalore. Initially I was hesitant on the non-stop drive with my previous experience of long drives in Scorpio. I finally decided to break half way at 500 kms in Ongole overnight. Later, I realized that with Crysta, it is a cake walk for a 1000 kms nonstop drive.

Visakhapatnam is a city of destiny and was surprised at the way it looks now from my engineering college days. The city is clean and beautiful. We had a nostalgic drive on one of the longest beach roads in India from Visakhapatnam to Bhimili (This road was laid by my father as he works for Roads and Buildings department of Andhra Pradesh. He was walking on this road from our home in palm beach to Rama Krishna beach every day at 4.30 am until his last day on earth at 85 years).

I also visited with crysta to my alma mater and had a photo in front of Andhra University engineering college hostel which was built by the Alumni funds.

I had some of the best experience of having a true authentic Andhra only vegetarian lunch at Subbiah gari hotel which is must visit place by all.

On my return to Bangalore, I had to break at Vijayawada overnight to visit the new tourism attraction of Bhavani islands which I had not seen before even though my passport says that I am born in Vijayawada. You need to set location on maps to take you to Punnami Ghat and not Bhavani island. This place is well managed by AP tourism and one needs to go by a boat to the island on the Krishna River.

Another interesting place to visit is the Bapu museum which is an archaeological museum, located at M. G. Road of Vijayawada. You can directly enter inside for free parking.

Then, it was a non-stop journey from Vijayawada to Bangalore via Tirupati. The road was fantastic except for small stretch from Naidupeta to Tirupati which is under construction.

One major surprise I observed in my long drive to Andhra Pradesh is that I had a hard time to find good only Vegetarian hotels on the high ways. In Tamilnadu and Karnataka, A2B, Saravana Bhavan, Kamat etc. are a popular chain of high-class vegetarian only restaurants and are situated conveniently every few kilometres. I hope somebody start this high-class vegetarian chain of hotels on Andhra Pradesh highways.

The photographs below are placed in the same chronological sequence of the storyline and it is self explanatory.

[GTO]

Mod Note: Thread moved to Introductions. That's one heck of an intro, welcome aboard!