Gentle giant
This month we decided to swap our long terms. As Abhishek was enjoying the fresh air and cool weather in the hills of Uttarakhand with the Maruti Swift, I decided to do some serious weightlifting by driving the 2.28 tonne Tata Hexa in the city. I read somewhere that when you’re in a transition, the best thing is to accept the uncertainty, and this is exactly what I had to come to terms with when I made my transition from the Swift to the Hexa. Being 4.7 metre in length, obviously, it’s not the easiest to weave around in traffic, but what added to my frustration was that I could feel the heaviness of the Hexa, especially in start-stop traffic.
I must confess the driving experience was bumming me out a bit, but it was the steering wheel that came to my rescue. It’s slightly heavy, but it responded well while taking a turn or a corner, ensuring that the Hexa changed directions without too much of an effort. The 154bhp, 2.2-litre engine with its linear and smooth acceleration had a therapeutic effect on me. It calmly negotiated traffic as the 400Nm of torque offered good low-end power ensuring that I wasn’t forced to fidget with the six-speed manual transmission and lose my cool. I noticed that once you embrace these shortcomings of the Hexa, it not only grew on me, but I started seeing its advantages too. Every time I would enter a bottleneck, the surrounding vehicles would make way for this colossus. I guess size does matter.
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