Oh yeah, you read it right. This is the first test drive report of Force Motor's Trax Gama on Team-BHP. I may not be the best person to do it, but you will have to settle for me for now. That also means, this one will be looong.
I have always been a car person since I got my first car. Although I have driven many minivans and SUVs in USA, none of them ever caught my fancy. I loved driving Jeep Grand Cherokee, but being a tarmac person, I still preferred driving cars with low CG. But things changed since last year, I live in a semi-rural place now, with frequent forays into rural roads. The roads here get absolutely screwed during monsoons and they don't get repaired until November. Last year found me driving Santro more than Baleno since I didn't want to subject the Baleno to these torturous roads. Besides it is easier to pick my way around potholes and puddles using the Santro. In the last few months I have been thinking about switching to a SUV before facing the next monsoon. Besides, my wife has always liked SUVs and their commanding stance.
But why did I bother about Gama when most guys go for Scorpio, Safari and to a lesser extent Bolero? Scorpio and Safari were designed for urbanites with all the luxuries in mind, and also priced as luxury cars. But the quality related niggles I have heard on the forum, I don't want to face them after paying so much money. I need a SUV to actually drive in rural roads, really terrible rural roads. I want a SUV that I don't mind driving on bad roads. In other words, I don't want a luxury SUV, I need a grunt that can get the job done reliably. While the Bolero falls into this category, I have rarely heard anything good about this jeep, the ride is supposedly very harsh. I basically need a rough and tough SUV which has very good ride quality (on decent and rough roads) and good off-roading ability when I want to try some adventure.
We all have heard about the legendary Trax Gurkha (SWB) and Trax Judo (LWB), the SUVs that can eat other SUVs for breakfast. Some members in Team-BHP have been waiting for years to own one. No current owner wants to sell them. Recently Force Motor announced a limited release of Trax Gurkha and lots of people have booked them and still waiting for the delivery. My first cousin happens to be one of them. I too have considered looking at Gurkha, but the uncertainty of delivery and lack of test drive availability discouraged me. For the uninitiated, both Gurkha and Judo are not openly available from force Motors. Check
this thread for more info.
Today my wife commented that she saw couple of Gamas recently and was quite impressed by the looks. That got me wondering, I knew Judo/Gama were essentially same chassis and even shared most parts including the engine. You can get the Gama with 4x4 and very same differential locks as Gurkha/Judo. So I called my cousin who had done extensive research before his Gurkha booking. He said there are 3 major differences:
Feature----------------------------------------Judo/Gurkha-------------------------------------------Gama--------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wheels-----------------------------------------16 inch rims-------------------------------------15 inch rims----------------
Diff-locks-breather-------------------------safe from water---------------------------------Not safe in water------------
Air-intake--------------------------------------Via Snorkel on top-----------------------------No snorkel-------------------
The wheels can be changed too, the remaining two features are factory install only. In other words, Gama is same as Judo except while fording a river or puddle in 3 feet water. I don't really intend to (at least not intentionally) ford rivers, so Gama should be good enough for me.
With that thought I called up MANGALORE FORCE and booked a test drive at 4PM today. The dealer repeatedly cautioned me that this is not a typical family vehicle with all the bells and whistles. I told him I was aware of it. The entire family of four including myself, wife, two sons (6 years old son and 4 months old son) decided to go for this test drive, after all this could be our next family car. When my father-in-law heard about the TD, he said Gama who??? However he was quite amused that the 4 month old too was going on the TD.
After 85 minutes of drive we reached Force dealership. The owner was not there as promised, but over phone he arranged for the TD. The manager was quite baffled at our entourage, but he got a driver and we started off. The TD vehicle was the basic model with no AC, no PS, and with BSII engine. At first I think he thought I am looking for a driver driven SUV for family trips. But I wanted to see an expert driver drive it first so that I can see its behavior with full concentration. The engine was very smooth, as I heard him move through gears, I could make out there was no strain on it what so ever. That was a good start.
We drove though NH17 first. The ride quality was amazing, we were going through continuous construction area and the road was quite rough, yet every bump in the road was swallowed up without a whimper. I asked the driver to take us to rougher roads so that we can feel the bumps, and he complied by getting off the highway and towards Kavoor. Unfortunately we didn't see any rougher roads, the manager apologized saying all the roads were recently repaired. I guess you can't count on PWD for anything these days, not even bad roads.
After some time I decided to take over the reins. As I sat in the driver seat, I made some observations:
1) The steering is close to horizontal, very very truck like. I asked whether there is a tilt option, I got a dazed look and a negative reply.
2) Just 3 dials, speedo, fuel gauge, temp gauge. I enquired about the tacho, same look again.
3) The dash is actually vertical and is practically empty. There is big enclosure in the bottom of the dash for inserting a stereo head.
4) No power anything. No power steering, A/C, power windows, or central locking or even any foam on the doors. Reminds me of my Maruti 800 days.
5) The seat was upright, so I tried changing it to suit my driving style. Fortunately it did have controls to adjust both seat and back. I hardly noticed any discomfort during the drive. However, the seat is short, doesn't give full thigh support I like.
6) The gear shift is floor mounted even though the front side has bench seat allowing driver+2. The 4x4 version though has driver+1 configuration.
7) All seats are bench style seats, only driver seat has any adjustment controls. The second row has very little leg room. The rear side has 4 side facing seats, but they have ample legroom if no luggage is kept. The regular version has 9+1 seats and 4x4 version has 8+1 seats.
8) Only front two seats have seat belts.
I adjusted the mirrors and started off on 2nd gear. I was told 1st is unused unless you are in some really deep incline. The floor based gear shifts were smooth enough contrary to expectation. That doesn't mean I liked floor based tall gear shift, it has too much travel. However, it does fall clearly into the gears with a click. The gears are little different than regular cars. The Reverse is left up, 1st is left down, 2nd is middle up, 3rd is middle down, 4th is right up and 5th is right down. At one point I was driving at 4th gear and the driver said I am in 3rd. I say no and start out to prove it is at right up. The manager and driver started laughing. Then they tell me that they don't count the 1st gear. Here 2nd is 1st, 3rd is 2nd, 4th is 3rd, 5th is 4th, and there is no 5th. So much for their insider joke. In other words, it is just like a 4-speed car gear shift, but don't push left, start from middle.
This was my first experience driving a diesel SUV, in fact my second diesel vehicle drive, the first being GTO's merc. So I didn't expect my test drive to be very revealing, I was mostly on wrong gears on most speeds. The smoothness I witnessed in every gear during the driver's drive was missing, but that was only to be expected. After not finding any bad roads, I found one uneven muddy area on the side, and so I went off-road for few seconds on that area at 40kmph. I saw everybody jumping up and down on their seat, but it was a smooth launch and landing, not a sharp kick in the butt. I liked the commanding position of the driver, but I should admit I was a little awkward in the beginning at driving this very different vehicle, but it grew on me by the time I reached back to the dealership. Surprisingly, the only time I noticed the lack of power steering was when I tried turning from a dead-stop position. The lack of PS went unnoticed when I took left or right turns while moving. That was very odd, how can this heavy truck feel so light to steer without power steering. The break was responsive, but I didn't try any emergency braking with an infant on board with no seat belts in rear. The NVH was really low, although the windows were down due to lack of AC, we could only hear traffic and not the engine.
After we reached the dealership, I checked the tyres. It has street tyres, the Apollo Duramile 7.00R15LT, which is 7inch wide 15inch tyres for light trucks. The manager and driver weren't much help since they didn't know how to read the tyre specs, I had to translate for them. However they told me 4x4 version comes with a different all terrain tyres.
Pros: Great ride, very responsive engine, apparently very good handler (couldn't test it though), cheap (the basic model is 4.65L)
Cons: Absolutely zero luxury. However, PS and AC can be ordered optionally.
The Trax Gama has four optional items - PS, A/C, BSIII engine and 4x4. Heck, I wanted all four, but they didn't have the price info on a model with all four. Therefore they promised to send a quote in couple of days.
It does come with an impressive 3Lakhs/3years warranty and 12 free services.
The model I tested had BS-II TD-2650F engine 60HP@3200RPM and 158Nm@200-2200. The BS-III TD-2650 FTI has 75HP@3200RPM and 195Nm@1800-2000.
Conclusion. This is a possibility, but the seats have to go. If we buy this, we need to rip off all the bench seats and put in some comfortable seats with ample leg room. With more powerful BS-III some really fat tyre can be considered. It is available in black, but the silly stickers have to go.
Some more photos:
Company website link to the Gama:
...::: Welcome to Force Motors : Products Section :::...
Specifications:
http://forcemotors.com/media/downloads/Gama_EIII.pdf