Maruti Bets Big On The Alto

Maruti’s decision to phase out the iconic 800 had left a lot of fans emotional, and some even watery-eyed. But India’s current largest selling passenger car Alto has now kind of replaced the 800, and now, is getting ready for a face lift. The company is planning to give a whole new 1000cc engine from K-Series to its favorite and hottest selling car that clocks sales of 17,000 to 18,000 units per month on average.

The plan to introduce Alto with a new engine is part of the carmaker’s tactic to fit its models with the latest K series engine. Maruti Suzuki India Chairman R C Bhargava said, “Alto needs a face-lift. It has been there for quite a while.” However, he declined to comment on the specifications of the engine.

With a bigger K-series engine, the new Alto will obviously be costlier than the current BS IV compliant model with 800cc F-Series engine. The existing Alto is priced between Rs 2.29 lakh and Rs 2.8 lakh.

At a time when the small car segment has become very competitive with new models arriving from Ford, GM, Nissan and Volkswagen.

How to Find the Best Used Car

In the earlier post we discussed how to clear up your car buying confusion. Most of us have agreed that buying a used car is often the best and most financially efficient choice. However, out of the excitement of getting a car, many used car buyers don’t look close enough at the pre-owned vehicle or they look at the wrong things. I don’t want your story included in the list of used car tragedies, so here are ten commandments on examining a pre-owned car.

Carefully examine the body, look for fresh paint jobs or different colors of paint on the body panels. Open the bonnet and look at the paintwork so that you can make out if the car has been repainted or not.
Under the bonnet, look for oil leaks and use the dipstick to check the amount of oil. If the level is low, the car hasn’t been looked after properly. Examine the surroundings of the oil filler cap, if you find a white substance it is an indication of a damaged head gasket, replacing which is going to be darn expensive.
Check the tyres and the spare tyre to ensure they’re in good condition with plenty of tread. If the tyres are bald, you can bargain up to Rs 1000 per tyre. Worn tyre edges indicate problems with the wheel alignment.
Check for acid wear and tear around the battery areas. If the battery is not new, there is another chance of decreasing the price of the car by Rs 2,500.
Another very important thing to assess is the suspension. Push down on top of the wing each side just once and release, the vehicle should go down and come back up once and stay put. If the car bounces up and down and appears soft, the shock absorbers are faulty. While test driving the car, listen for any ‘thud’ sound coming from the shock absorbers. Replacing them is going to be incredibly expensive, so what I would suggest is, try another car if the suspension is defective.
Get inside, check the kilometre reading of the car and calculate with the year of manufacture. There is always a possibility of Odometer tampering irrespective of the meter being mechanical or electronic.
Personally speaking, clutch is the most challenging part of a used car. Because, if the car has done more than 50,000 kms, you don’t know when the car is going to break down in the middle of the road due to clutch failure. Unfortunately, there’s probably no practical way to measure the degree of clutch wear. Yet, you can refer this link to get an idea on How to Diagnose a Slipping Clutch.
Check ALL electrical components, lightings, dippers, cabin lights, indicators and tail lamps, stereo, windshield washer and wiper and especially, Air Conditioner.
Start the engine. It should start at the first attempt without any hiccups. The engine should idle seamlessly without clattering or metallic sounds. With the engine idling, turn the steering wheel right and left and ensure there’s no play in the wheel before the tyres start to turn.
Test drive is the most important part of examining a used-car. Drive it for 4-5 kilometers in different road conditions, paying attention to the synchronization of the steering wheel, brake pedals, clutch, and the gear shifts. Drive with AC on/off while climbing a slope, there shouldn’t be an abnormal drop in power when the AC is on.

These Ten Commandments can be condensed into one single dictum: Hire a good mechanic and have the car inspected by him

VW Polo Has A Sedan Sibling – Vento

ot on the heels of an aggressive brand campaign and the much hyped Polo launch, Volkswagen has officially confirmed its plan to introduce Polo sedan, but with the Vento nameplate instead. Officially unveiled at the Moscow Motor Show recently, the Vento is expected to hit the Indian market by August-September with a price tag of Rs. 7-9 lakhs.

Most of us must have cribbed about the lack of rear legroom in the Polo, but the sedan sibling comes with more space inside, thanks to the 50mm longer wheelbase. Except for a different grille and lights, the Vento is more or less similar to the Polo up to the B-Pillar. Boot space is said to be somewhere near 500 litres with a split seat option on offer.
According to Autocar, the Vento will initially get two engine options – petrol and diesel. Both these engines displace 1.6 litres and both produce 105bhp. However, the diesel has a thumping 25.5kgm of torque to the petrol motor’s 15.8kgm and their driving characteristics will differ like chalk and cheese. The 1.6 common-rail diesel is brand new and comes from the same engine family as the 1.2 turbo-diesel that powers the Polo and the bigger 2-litre diesel under the hood of the Jetta.

The new Vento will be the seventh model in India from Volkswagen’s stable. The company currently offers compact cars Beetle and Polo, premium sedans Phaeton, Passat and Jetta and sports utility vehicle Touareg.

checkout the site for more pictures
http://in.yfittopostblog.com/2010/06/07/vw-polo-has-a-sedan-sibling-vento/

Erase painful memories

Anti-fear drug may help erase painful memories
It is possible to overcome bad memories of painful situations with the help of a chemical that works on the brain, say scientists.

Researchers suggest that anti-fear medication could help soldiers deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. The new study was carried out on laboratory rats.

According to boffins, instead of working in the same way as a conventional sedative or anti-depressant, the new chemical stimulates the area of the brain thought to be involved in remembering a painful situation from the past. The chemical, called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), is naturally produced in the brain and is involved in learning and memory. When given to the rats, the drug caused them to re-learn a painful association so that the memory of it is extinguished - although not lost entirely.

"Many lines of evidence implicate BDNF in mental disorders. This work supports the idea that medications could be developed to augment the effects of BDNF, providing opportunities for pharmaceutical treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders," said Thomas Insel, director of the US National Institute of Mental Health.

Published in the journal Science, the study investigated how laboratory rats freeze when they hear a sound that they have associated with a small electric shock to their feet. It is possible to overcome this fear of the sound by training the animals with a series of similar sounds not associated with painful shocks.

The Independent reports, "But by injecting BDNF, a protein that stimulates the growth of nerve cells, into the brains of the rats, the scientists found they could mimic the effects of the retraining process. This chemical mimicry only worked if they put BDNF into a part of the brain called the infralimbic prefrontal cortex, a structure that appears to be critical for the extinction of memory.

"The drug seems to induce a "memory of safety" in the rats that overrides the fearful memory. In effect, the BDNF drug mimics the effect of retraining the rats to extinguish the memory of the painful situation, said Gregory Quirk of the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, who led the investigation."

"The surprising finding here is that the drug substituted for extinction training, suggesting that it induced such a memory [of safety]," Dr Quirk said.

Banker sues Citigroup after she was fired for being 'too hot'!

A female employee of Citibank was apparently fired from her job because her male colleagues found her 'too distracting'.

Debrahlee Lorenzana said that despite her turnout being professional, her male bosses and co-workers still found her too hot be around their cold cash.

"Shortly after the commencement of her employment, branch manager Craig Fisher and assistant branch manager Peter Claibourne began articulating inappropriate and sexist comments concerning plaintiff's clothing and appearance," The New York Post quoted her court filings as saying.

"The improper comments made to plaintiff by Fisher and Claibourne included, but were not limited to, advising her that she must refrain from wearing certain items of clothing, in particular, turtleneck tops, pencil skirts, fitted business suits, or other properly tailored clothing.

"In blatantly discriminatory fashion, plaintiff was advised that as a result of the shape of her figure, such clothes were purportedly 'too distracting' for her male colleagues and supervisors to bear."

The filing also read, "In a regressive response more suitable for reality television than a white-shoe corporation in the 21st century, plaintiff was advised that these other comparator females may wear what they like, as their general unattractiveness rendered moot their sartorial choices, unlike plaintiff, whose shapeliness could not be heightened by beautifully tailored clothing."

After rejecting a complaint and an application to be transferred, she was eventually moved to a new branch, she was reprimanded for failing to recruit new customers.

"The purported reasons for plaintiff's termination included that she failed to meet the required new account opening quotas, in addition to the credulity-straining assertion that her clothing choices were 'inappropriate,'" the suit said.

"Are you saying that just because I look this way genetically, that this should be a curse for me?" she told the Village Voice, which first reported her case.

In a statement, Citibank said, "We believe this lawsuit is without merit and we will defend against it vigorously."

Citibank has not commented for reasons of employee privacy but added that the bank has "a strong commitment to diversity and we do not condone, or tolerate, discrimination within our business for any reason."