Srinivas Krishnan: Missing the action...

MY WEEK

MONDAY
Putting together big, fat issues of Business Standard Motoring means the loss of enrichment opportunities, both professional and personal. Here I was sitting at office, subjecting my computer keyboard to substantial abuse, while I could have been caressing the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz E 280 CDI instead, doing the Jaipur-Delhi run at an illegal pace effortlessly. Or I could have left shreds of expensive Michelin on tarmac""rubber which would have filled the wheel arches of a Porsche Cayman S beautifully. Such things happen when you have to put together the heaviest issue of Business Standard Motoring in time. Yes, the January 2007 issue of our magazine means it's our eighth anniversary already. More pages, more content, more features, more irreverence, more fun... also more late hours, more stress, more work. Having to see all the crafted words before they go into the magazine and ensuring that the art department doesn't mix up Tata and Tatra, or Isotta with Isetta for that matter, means sacrificing on some really nice things. For instance, DaimlerChrysler, on one of the very rare occasions, lined up ALL their products for a drive around the Golden Triangle. And that included the superlative Maybach, the all-new S-Class and even the new ML-Class. Or I could have attended the Porsche World Road Show at the airstrip at Aamby Valley, Lonavla, and subjected the greatest drivers' cars on earth to some er, subjective driving. But no, for me it was endurance testing of the Logitech keyboard.

TUESDAY
It was the biggest logistical exercise we have ever orchestrated. Ensuring ten different cars from seven diverse manufacturers arrive at the same place at the same time can be a bit of a headache. It meant draining the charge of cellphone batteries and spending airtime throughout the day, a day which overflowed all the way to 3.30 am. The reason? The next day was going to be the evaluation drive for our annual Business Standard Motoring Car Of The Year 2007. The cars ranged from the teenie-weenie Maruti-Suzuki Zen Estilo to the five-metre long Audi Q7""from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 64 lakh""and everything in between. In fact, the bunch of ten contenders was the result of a judiciously pared-down list. With a huge number of new cars lined up for launch in 2007, the list of contenders is just going to double. A logistical nightmare awaits us at the same time next year.

WEDNESDAY
Our Car Of The Year evaluation drive passed off well. Our route was pretty comprehensive, a 300-km loop that includes congested city roads, the blazing fast Mumbai-Pune Expressway, dual carriageways and curving hill roads. The sight of ten diverse machines hanging around together and generally puttering around the countryside attracted quite some attention. But the one that got the most enquiries is the Zen Estilo. People look at the Q7 in awe and keep distance, but they approach the Zen, poke fingers into it and ask innumerable questions. If these curious souls were made to vote, I know exactly which will be their Car Of The Year.

FRIDAY
Caught up with an old friend who was in the automotive industry, but now is looking in from the outside. He joined a software development company in Bangalore which offers solutions to automotive manufacturers. He can now make it possible to turn those Which Car? queries (that you see in our Weekend Motoring page) that populate our inboxes into sales leads to automotive companies. It's big thing in the US and is seen as an effective tool to convert leads into firm sales. Something like this may be at a nascent stage in our country and people may consider it as premature, but it looks like the way to go. People are researching on the Net before making a decision on buying a car. So if you are asking Business Standard Motoring about which car to buy, obviously, you are in the market for one. So one leads to another and everybody is happy.