[EmpyreanKnight]

First of all I am thankful to Team- BHP moderators for bestowing upon me the prestigious membership of this forum and I feel proud of myself for achieving a member status.

I am a mechanical engineer, but like many hybrid people, I am working in software industry which caters to Heavy Industries.

I have been a car enthusiast since my teenage and my first job was in a TATA commercial vehicle dealer ship. It was an awesome job, I felt proud working there and I was responsible for selling TATA 207 pickup truck. I did this job just because I had not appeared for my final exams in engineering and had ample of free time on my hands, so I thought why not take some experience and also enjoy while doing it, but as it was bound to happen, I was not able to concentrate on my studies and could not clear exams to complete engineering, this led me to leave the job and concentrate on studies.

Once I completed my mechanical engineering, I got a job in a process industry as a PLC operator, this was because few of my distant family members were working there on good positions and my father insisted that I will have a good career over there; this was also because my immediate family were all in government jobs and for them job security was a prime concern. I worked there for a quite some time but the enthusiast in me always wanted to work in Automobiles and like I mentioned in the heading of the post, I am from Aurangabad, this is the home of Skoda in India and I saw this as an opportunity.

Some how I convinced my father that I want to leave this job and work in Skoda. I got the interview offer from a consultancy and I got selected but the interview and behaviour of my would-be boss was not that I was expecting but I was in awe of what I saw on the shop/assembly floor, new shiny cars being built. I ignored my interview experience and started working there, the time to start the job was 7 am and there was no fixed time on when you would end the shift & the job that I got was to check the wheel balancing on the machine and stick the weights to the tiers accordingly, the first week I enjoyed this but then reality struck me and I went on a future trip within my mind. How will I grow in this organisation and what is my future here? This trip in future made me realised, I am not made for this and I left the job after sometime.

This was the time when I started looking into my other interest area - Computers! And I came to know about CAD-CAM courses which were used in different industries and also in car industries, some how I convinced my mom to convince my Dad that he pays for this CAD-CAM diploma, which costed a lot that time. I did that diploma and after finishing it I realised it not so easy to get a job in Automobile design and I started teaching the same software to other students.

Since I was really good with softwares and also quite patient with people, I got really popular in local collages, students used to come to the institute with a request that they only will take admission if I was the instructor, I enjoyed this period of my life, you get a lot of respect when you teach but I feel that in our country, teachers are not handsomely paid and that is also the reason it’s not the first career choice for many of us. Back to the topic, like I mentioned I was quite happy with my job but I was earning enough, hence I switched to a MNC and started working there on a completely new software which was used for piping design and we use to design diesel power plants, I did this for almost a decade and now I work in a software company that makes softwares that are used in heavy industries. Well that’s all about my carrier, now onto automobiles / bikes.

My Father’s possessions

Bikes
1. Vijay Super Scooter (Sold)
2. Pre-owned Kinetic 4S (Sold)
3. Access 125 (I am using it in Mumbai, my work location)
4. New Access 125- BS 6 Version.(I gifted him this)

Cars
1. Pre-owned Maruti Suzuki Omni (Sold)
2. Pre-owned Ford Ikon (Sold)
3. Pre-owned Maruti Suzuki Swift ( in process of acquiring, as I write this)

My possessions

Bikes
1. TVS XL super (Dad bought for me, Sold)
2. TVS Victor (Dad bought for me, Sold)
3. TVS Apache 180 (Sold)
4. Karizma R (not sold, but friend is using it)
5. Access 125 (Wife using it)

Cars
1. Maruti Suzuki Swift (First new car in our family, now Sold)
2. Elite i20 (planning to sell it & Upgrade)

There are so many stories/memories to write about each vehicle listed above but I will keep this post relevant to my introduction and my experience with variety of automobiles.

Hope to be a meaningful part of this community.

[RahulNagaraj]

Hello EmpyreanKnight,

Welcome to Team-BHP!

That's an amazing & long lineup of cars and bikes you've had over the years. Why not start off by posting an ownership experience of some of them.

Looking forward to reading your posts on the forum.

Cheers!
Rahul N

[EmpyreanKnight]

Originally Posted by RahulNagaraj

Why not start off by posting an ownership experience of some of them
Cheers!
Rahul N

Thank you for a warm welcome Rahul, I too was little amazed with the list of vehicles that i have experienced, after listing them down here. Yes I would love to begin the ownership review of my elite i20. Hopefully, once I have some time to pen it down. I have driven it for almost 30K kilometers and it has been a wonderful experience so far.