[Arjun Reddy]

Love my cars to bits. Love driving them and have a great time.

However, I do not drive much in Bangalore traffic. Have my trusted driver for more than 10 years now. He drives in the city, keeps the cars in good shape, does the cleaning , vacuuming and polishing. I just take my business calls and emails,that helps in me being more productive on the commute.

I never take my driver out on my highway runs and trips. It is always me at the wheel on holidays trips or even the 120 KM run to my farm.

I hate to commute but Live to Drive.

[king of cochin]

I am crazy about cars and bikes, I have a Bullet, a Thar and and an Alto. But when it comes to travelling within Bangalore I prefer using a BMTC bus, Auto or Ola/Uber. On occasion I have even walked some 10-15 kms to avoid driving.

I love driving too much to "drive" in Bangalore.

So it sounds natural to love cars and love driving but hate driving in a city.

PS: Due to reduced traffic thanks to Corona now I drive more often within Bangalore.

[vinya_jag]

We all are going through the mind shift. Do we like to drive at all?
But the question in our minds are probably these:
- Do we prefer to drive or take a more sustainable option?
- Will I reach faster driving, or by train
- Can I walk, instead of drive/ ride?
- Can I avoid going there afeter all
- Can I cycle there? How dusty the roads are?

I don't think any of the above will make us less of an enthusiast.
My eyes are still glued to a well modified Zen, and would start drooling at seeing a Mini Cooper. I still would love the sight of a Civic, and think, should we buy one ourself. I still wash the cars and the bikes in the garage and feel good about it, though I don't take them out often.

Watch the team-bhp space for the next few years. We will all be raving about the electric launches that will happen in our country in the next few years. We possibly will be driving them as well. There will be more of us cycling and taking buses to office.

BTW, my new found love. Hope to be riding this more than the other beauties in our garage

[drive1987]

FAB topic!

Let me start off by thanking avi550m for starting this topic and this is awesome.

I'm in my early 30s and I live in Bangalore. I would love to believe that I'm a car enthusiast and I love driving! And, I drive a Ford Fiesta Classic (1.6 P) - manual of course.

But, in my honest opinion, there are two ways to look at driving.

1> The actual driving, where you get to utilize all aspects of the car - Slotting the gear through all the ratios, using the accelerator generously and using the brakes to modulate the speed.

2> The crawling... This is what I do 99.00% of the times I drive in Bangalore. I just get two gears to use (1st & 2nd), heavy usage of clutch & breaks and *seldomly use the accelerator to pickup some speed (may be 20 to 30 KMs/h max)

I must confess that I dread taking out my car everyday to work. It has become a task that makes me nervous/anxious every single day. Below listed are a few aspects of driving in crowded cities that bring out the worst in me.

1> Unruly drivers/riders on our roads. Looking at their aggressive faces makes me think that they are always in a mood to take up a fight with anyone. They scream ROAD RAGE!!!

2> I hate to say this but, yes! every single day, either curse some biker/autowala/cabbie or we stare at each other in anger just ready to get into a fight.

3> HONKING!!! This blows off my cool! Unnecessary HONKING at signals. I just cannot take it, many times I've gotten into arguments at signals just because of some cabbie honking when the signal is RED.

4> Bikers squeezing their way out from left/right dashing against our OVRMs and not bothering to even put it back to its original position.

Bottom line - Driving in Bangalore/any other crowded city in India is just like getting into a battlefield and be ready to fight!

Now psychological, when your body gets ready to fight until you reach office, your biological state gets into a "Fight OR Flight" mode which releases all sorts of stress hormones and induces ANXIETY.

I've been driving in the above described conditions daily for 6 years now and I think I've got Chronic Anxiety now.

Just the thought of driving and dealing with these morons on the road makes me so numb and I feel really very sad about it because driving is one thing I enjoy to my CORE, but these external factors stop me from reaping the pure fun of driving and this makes me really frustrated!

I'M A CAR ENTHUSIAST & I LOVE DRIVING (BUT NOT IN THE CITY LIMITS)

[pradeepkc]

You are not alone. Pre covid, I mostly used Ola/Uber for commuting. Hated driving in the congested parts of Bangalore. I fortunately live near the edge of the city next to a highway and getting out to enjoy is drive is easy and do so every now and then. Post covid, I haven't had to drive as much into the city, but not looking forward to driving as much once I need to start commuting.

[Hayek]

Great thought and great thread.

As many people have said before, you don’t have to drive to be a car enthusiast. I probably was much more of a car enthusiast 35 years ago, as a tween who insisted that his dad buy him a copy of “The Daily Express Guide to World Cars” from one of the Book Exhibitions at Cross Maidan (it cost ₹30 - which was an unimaginably large sum of money for us back then), than I am today. I went through that magazine page by page - and knew details of auto production in every country, and the specs of virtually every model in it.

Also started tracking Formula 1 racing (the odd clip in the Times of India sport page + the odd telecast on Doordarshan) back then, and buying Indian car magazines. I had a picture of a Lamborghini Countach on my wall, when my friends had Madonna or Samantha Fox (do you guys remember her). And yes, my satellite TV journey started with Top Gear.

I still enjoy driving - I drove myself to work (pre lockdown) every day in BKC traffic, despite the fact that the average speed I end up doing is just 20 kmph (including the odd sea link or Eastern Freeway sprint), and have taken driving holidays abroad once every couple of years. But my knowledge pales compared to the genuine enthusiasts on our forum - and often amounts to using my information synthesis skills to summarise what others have said.

So don’t ever feel that you are not an enthusiast - because you don’t want to drive in Bangalore or Bombay, and definitely not because you own an A-Star and not a 530d. The fact is that enthusiasm comes from the desire to learn, and the knowledge you have. And fancier cars are just a reflection of the money you have (and your ability to convince your spouse to let you spend) - there is no end to it. If you rate yourself by money, the guy with the 530d will always feel miserable when he sees an M5, and the M5 will feel like junk next to a La Ferrari. There is no end to that game.

Lots of people used a sport analogy here. I always considered myself a sport enthusiast - tracked virtually every tennis game in the McEnroe, Lendl, Becker and Edberg era. But I have no hand eye coordination at all, and have never held a tennis racket in my hand. And the same applies to most other sports (bar marathon running, every un-athletic middle aged person’s last refuge). And when people comment about my lack of ability to play a game I am so enthusiastic about, I just throw the following lines from one of my favourite poems at them,

“ When swollen eye meets gnarled fist
When snaps the knee, and cracks the wrist,
When officialdom demands,
Is there a doctor in the stands?
My soul in true thanksgiving speaks
For this modest of physiques.

"Athletes, I’ll drink to you
Or eat with you,
Or anything except compete with you,
Buy tickets worth their radium,
To watch you gambol in the stadium,
And reassure myself anew
That you are not me and I’m not you".


- Ogden Nash”

[vredesbyrd]

Within a city (especially Bangalore)? Absolutely not. Too much of a pain. I was taking autos/cabs everywhere except office. But if a road trip? Hell yeah! I will not let anyone else take the wheel. Driving withing Indian cities is a nightmare (except for Mhow). Outside city limits is absolutely fine as long as you avoid deadly trucks, two wheelers trying to commit suicide and angry village mobs trying to lynch/rob you.

[Tgo]

My aunt living in Brisbane puts up about 30,000 km a year on the family SUV, household chores, getting the children to school, picking and dropping the grandkids when their parents are away. All she asks for is a comfortable car.

The uncle on the other hand loves his cars and owns a few, ranging from a Citroen Traction Avant to a 612 Scaglietti. He drives them all, but much less than my aunt.

You have two different types of enthusiasts right there.

Everyone can be called an enthusiast, the interest level differs.

[balenoed_]

I have a friend who has great knowledge about cars, models, variants etc, but doesn't know driving. That I guess is one step extreme than the subject of this thread.

[MadiMaama]

This is an excellent thread.

I am a car enthusiast but my love will always be for heavy machinery like trucks and buses. Sadly, I won't ever get to drive them.

I'm also an active railfan, and again, the government of India does not allow railfans to drive the trains.

Absolutely no correlation between the two.

Just my two cents

Thanks

Ani

[Tushar]

I don't see why one wouldn't qualify as a car enthusiast even if they weren't fans of driving. For example, 3 out of 4 people would claim they're foodies but some would call cooking a chore while others would call it therapeutic.

To that end, loving cars doesn't entail loving everything to do with cars. Driving, building a project car, vintage cars, off roading, motorsport, heck, even cleaning your own car; the number of things associated with car enthusiasts is endless. Is a wealthy aristocrat with 200 coach built vintage cars more of an enthusiast than the guy who takes his Celerio AMT on 200km trip just to have tea at a spot he likes?

Yes, you can be a car enthusiast and not love driving. Even Lewis Hamilton loves racing but doesn't like regular driving. Passion has nuance and not everything needs to be an absolute.

[Sushan9909]

This thread has been a lifesaver for me. I love to drive on the weekends, especially in the mornings, but dread the weekday traffic in Kolkata. To top it off, parking is a pain, especially in front of cafes. So, I do not see the logic behind taking the car out (and driving it myself). A cab/local transport makes a lot more sense.

On the other hand, I feel I should be driving even in traffic, as I have a car in the garage. It has been a never-ending, self-criticizing, overthinking loop for me.

This thread has helped me prioritize. I am now trying to drive when I can actually enjoy driving, instead of crawling in traffic.

[Bhodrolok]

As a fellow Bengaluru driver, I feel OP. But based on what I read in this thread, maybe we should include the words "Indian cities" to make it "Can one be a car enthusiast, and not love driving in Indian cities?"

I go through the same emotions too but every time I take a cab, I am reminded why it's so much easier to just drive.

However, I have learned from experience in the city, the office crawl I can't help but every other drive is only if it's strictly required. So, all visits to restaurants/friends are on Sundays only, avoid Saturdays at all costs unless it is something that cannot be done other days. If I need to go somewhere on a weekday, I choose to start after 11 most times and try to be back by 3.