Rising stars

The Indian rally scene is finally waking up to some new stars.

The Indian rally scene hasn't been up to scratch lately. Actually, it hasn't been up to scratch since the early eighties, when Ken Shinozuka blasted through the Himalayan countryside in his Mitsubishi Galant.

After that, the rally spectators (whatever little is left of those) have witnessed cars that were so out of place on a rally circuit that in Europe they wouldn't even have been used as service cars.

There was the Premier Padmini, the Maruti 800, the legendary Gypsy (it still runs today, but in a class of its own) and a few other one-offs. But then let's just put that down to circumstance.

The mid nineties saw the arrival of the Esteem. Now, the 1300cc sedan was a revelation that everyone hoped was here to stay. And boy, did their wish come true. The Esteems became as much a fixture on the rally circuit as they did on the commute to work.

The introduction of the City VTEC and the Baleno did draw in some amount of interest, but let's face it, in the past two decades we haven't seen a single car that would make us go weak in the knees. Until now.

This year, the special stages will be blitzkrieged by two new cars that are quite hot even on the international motorsport scene. First up is the Ford Fiesta. Now, the Fiesta has competition written all over it's floorpan.

The European Fiesta rallies in the Series 1600 class and has a lot in common with the car built in Chennai. The Fiestas debuted in the first rally this year at Pune, but neither of them finished the rally. Okay, so they didn't exactly blitzkrieg anything, but then Round 4 did see the MRF Fiesta finish third overall.

The other 'international' entrant though had a much better result on its Indian debut. In the recently concluded Bosch K1000 rally at Bangalore, the Mitsubishi Lancer Cedia finished 53 seconds ahead of the field. Now that's victory in style. But then the Lancer has been on a dust diet since time immemorial.

So does that mean you can walk into your local Mitsubishi/ Ford showroom, walk out with a new car and arrive at the gravel stage? Er... not quite. You see, while these cars do have competition DNA, they have to be suitably modified.

That means stripping the car to its bare bones and fitting it with all sorts of things to make it rally worthy. In other words, that means spending money.

How much? Well, a Fiesta Group N engine kit will cost you Rs 5 lakh, while the dog-shift gearbox will set you back by almost three big ones. Wait, there's more.

The dampers are about a lakh and a half a set and there is another entire list of things you need to get just to comply with the regulations. Total cost? A stomach churning Rs 15 lakh. And that's without the cost of the car or the duties. As for the Cedia, that figure rises to somewhere in the region of... Rs 30 lakh!

The costs might make it seem like a perfect case of being 'so close yet so far,' but that isn't the case. Because these cars will actually move the game forward for Indian drivers in a big way.

Earlier, the drivers who won the Esteem class moved on to the Balenos and those who won the Balenos had nothing to look forward to.

But now not only do they have cars to graduate to, they would be doing so on cars that would make them familiar with even more powerful cars, the sort that dominate international rally circuits.

For example, the full blown Rally Lancer that will arrive at the Rally of Hyderabad will produce close to 170 bhp. That's the same sort of power that cars make in the European Group A JWRC series. This simply wasn't the case when Balenos were running around.

However, both these cars are entered by tyre companies rather than manufacturers. So as far as car manufacturers getting involved in the sport is concerned, it's still status quo. But then at least this is a start.

Besides, think about it this way. Wouldn't you have given absolutely anything to see the Cedia in rally livery two years ago? We certainly would.