I’m often skeptical of car manufacturers when they treat journalists real well. It seems they are buying good words by putting us press boneheads up in a really nice hotel that we don’t even come close to deserving. If Ferrari would have put me up in Trivandrum, India’s version of the Motel 6, with a few cockroaches, a king cobra under the covers, and coffee-brown tap water, I think I would have more respect for their Magic India Discovery event.
On Sunday, I was in a clean, chic 4 (or 5) star hotel in Trivandrum, and started to have my Car-Company-Is-Kissing-My-Buttinsky Radar go off as I saw a very ornate and not-so-rugged-looking convoy pull up to the entrance. A neat array of Tata vans and trucks boxed in two surprisingly clean, impeccably-badged 612 Scagliettis. The bumf given to me by Ferrari contained a lot of names, one of which was ‘Enrique’, the chief expedition leader guy that was sort of directing this difficult road trip. I found Enrique among the crowd, and he and I got acquainted as the journalists who had finished their leg of the trip tramped wearily into the hotel, with what I suspected was a collective case of indigestion. Immediately, the 612s were whisked away to the car park, which suddenly became a grand, make-shift Ferrari pit garage as numerous little Italian men went to work on freshening up the Scags.
Early yesterday, I crawled into the comfortable cab of Scaglietti No. 2, which I affectionately christened ‘Vasco’ in honor of European free trade pioneer, Vasco de Gama. It was the most comfortable position I had been in since I arrived on Indian soil, possibly because it felt very familiar. The sensation of getting behind the wheel of a Ferrari is a very intimate, touching moment. It’s like running into an old mate and going to the pub to drunkenly laugh at jokes that only the two of you ever thought were funny. That sense of almost brotherly familiarity was a chillingly comforting sensation in this Ye Exotic Land of Curry and Psychotically Ornate Temples. Me and Vasco were best buddies lookin’ out for each other in this strange country.
With this image in mind, the convoy set off…..at a spectacularly brisk 5 kilometers per hour. Driving in Trivandrum is a bit like driving through the mosh pit at Woodstock Festival. The roads seem to be more sidewalk than road, and anything with four wheels is massively outnumbered by the swarm of mopeds, rickshaws, bicycles, and other forms of transportation that Tata Motors hopes will so be replaced by the Nano. Wonderful: now the square footage of road taken up by a moped will be multiplied five times over. That should help India’s traffic problem, for sure!
My cynicism was not short-lived, however, because the traffic lasted for hours. We probably made about 5 miles that entire morning. Finally, right when I was contently having my lunch courtesy of another traffic jam, the convoy made a turn onto a big road which was free of traffic. With a submarine sandwich slowly falling apart in my lap, I had to give the big V12 a kick in the seat to keep up. In a way, I was unbelievably jubilant at finally reaching 3rd gear. It meant that I could finally drive the 612 the way it was meant to be: at swift cruising speed on a scenic motorway.
Not so. On the “NH-7,” as it was called, Enrique limited our speed to a measly 70 kilometers per hour. As I miserably watched 30-year old hatchbacks and ugly lorries overtake me in a 540 horsepower Ferrari, I began to dislike Ferrari’s Magic India Discovery quite a lot. I understand that Enrique had to make the cars last for a lot of mileage, but still: I could be magically discovering India in a Volkswagen Minibus at this rate. Why am I driving a Ferrari if I can’t drive the way a Ferrari should be driven? And here’s another thing: Ferrari is always touting their cars’ reliability and ruggedness on these trips, but the fact of the matter is that any brand new car would last this long if you baby it in such a way.
I was so uncomfortably buggered that I began to rebel. I slowed down at times to make room between me and the other 612, and then for a brief moment, I floored it, squeezing a few moments of pleasure out of what was beginning to be a very drab trip.
I guess what I was supposed to be doing, according to Ferrari, was “magically discovering India” and its scenery, culture, people, etc. But I was in a bloody 612 Scaglietti on an asphalt motorway! Why do they expect me to ignore the car so? It was the most interesting thing in my entire life at that moment.
But then, thankfully, around the time the sun began to set, Enrique gave us a green light to split from the convoy and stretch the Fezzas’ camshafts for a while. It was a most liberating sensation, putting the 612 into top gear. At 150 kph, I finally began to enjoy discovering India. The 612 seemed happy, too, as all that idling and puttering about can definitely have a demoralizing effect on a high-performance supercar. It just responded with typical Italian eagerness every time I blipped the throttle; meanwhile I watched the convoy of Tatas go backwards in my rearview mirror. Happiness is a Ferrari at full beans. The adventuresome kid in me finally got out.
When we reached our first checkpoint in some little Indian town, my malcontent had begun to wear off. I had reached my speed quota for the day, and skipping the Ferrari PR event in the evening, went up to my room to sleep in a bed graciously provided by Ferrari. What a day.
1 Comment
September 25, 2008 at 7:14 am
thanks
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