Ashish Jha

autoX Awards 2024: The last-gen Carnival was dry as dust but the aesthetic enhancements have afforded it enough visual zest and is a bold look without being in-your-face. The list of creature comforts is extensive with all the features you can imagine, and the latest ADAS suite keeps up with the game.

Beautiful coast – check. Capable machine – check. Great roads – check. We had all the right ingredients, but some road trips are more than just a bit of fun. Some also cleanse the soul. 

Ashish wants us to stop pigeonholing creativity. Is a worker beating metal in a foundry an artist, he asks? Creativity isn't anyone’s copyright. There’s no patent on it. Yet, there are stereotypical perceptions around what’s classified as creativity and creative people.

The Ducati 959 Panigale is as omnipotent as superbikes used to be. We head on to the Chang circuit in Buriram, Thailand to get a glimpse of this new Ducati, but this time around, we're riding with the two-time world champion Manuel Poggiali.

Ashish wonders how and why cars get names like Adam, Laura, or Eon? I’ve always been fascinated with human evolution and often wonder about extremely silly, yet intriguing, things about the journey from our monkey-days to our modern form.

This year’s Auto Expo made up for the lack of eye-candy enthusiast-pleasing things with production-ready sensible vehicles. Many of you consuming contents of this magazine might not know the format of the Auto Expo very clearly, so let me just put it in a sentence here.

Ashish’s wish list for 2016 is a short one – it contains just 15 simple demands! One of which is for you to start being more courteous on the roads. A lot has already been said about Arvind Kejriwal’s road-rationing odd-even idea, so I won’t ‘pollute’ this space any more.

Ashish feels that SUV’s need to lose the ‘sport’ tag, and machines that can go off-road need to be referred to as such – off-roaders! There’s always been a great fascination with the term ‘sport’ in the automotive world.

Ashish wants you to tell him what you think will be a future classic... As I recall from me early days, mine was a pretty average family. According to me, no one in the family had especially great taste. My sister didn’t have great taste in music – she used to listen to pop mostly.

Ashish says that India is a very tricky market for global players, and this is a point perfectly illustrated by the troubles faced by VW and Skoda in this market.   I bought a Skoda Laura (better known as the Octavia internationally) at a time when the Honda Civic was still around.