OVERDRIVE: DO NOT LEAN TOO MUCH ON INDICA........ Review on Overdrive Youth Magazine

There is no better review on this magazine than my e-mail addressed to their editor, as appended below. Conclude yourself.

''This is with reference to the various news reports, commentary and letters said to have been written to you by your disappointed readers on Fiat products and FIAT organization. I wish to state that I have first hand experience with TELCO as a past supplier of ancillary in the1980s, and have visited TELCO several times. For a short period, I was a senior executive in Swastik Rubber Products, Pune, and have been managing the supplies of seals and mountings to TELCO, after having worked under a multinational organizational culture, in this field, before joining Swastik. I could not tolerate the management style,confusion and inefficiency at TELCO as well as some of my clients at Pune, and resigned my job within three months. I was at that time wondering how companies like TELCO was turning out such a big product like TATA 1210 trucks, with such inefficiency and to say the least, they were rolling out with just basic things without essential international specifications like Directional Indicators. Such was the culture of any Indian automobile manufacturers of such large size with large employee strength those days, and with today's political base it must be still worse. It was a jungle where one could get lost easily and I had to discard Telco's business when I started my own industry. IF YOU WANT, I CAN EXPLAIN IN DETAIL WITH PROOF. I still do nat have a good image of any Indian Giant organisation for that matter, unless there is a foreigner at the top with a steel rod.

It is still a surprise to me if TELCO is able to produce a car like Indica. Having worked in a Multinational Firm for long, I am a first hand witness of the vast difference between Indian style of management and the European ones. I am at a loss to understand how you are able to blindly justify your perverted and pessimistic view about PALIO vis-a-vis FIAT Italian management philosophy. Multinationals appoint dealers in India in good faith. If they do something wrong, it is the responsibility of the consumers to protect themselves, and also to fight with the Government against such frauds. You cannot blame FIAT of Italy for the fraud of Premier Auto, and we should be ashamed of having spoilt our image with an Italian firm.On the contrary, you are highlighting flimsy complaints from readers who do not know what they write on what they want to write.

One of your readers has stupidly compared Siena and PALIO, probably just looking at the pictures on the Web. Palio in India has a far different look than elsewhere,and also the Siena, both inside and outside. The materials used are far different in PALIO, especially 1.6 GTX Upholstery fabric and seating angle. I have driven Siena 1.6 Petrol and also PALIO 1.6 GTX and the latter is far different in the comfort offered at its price.The head lights of Palio cannot be compared with those of Siena.Your reader has not read the news column on future SIENA 1.6, to be relased in 2002, whose photograph has appeared in another automobile magazine,AUTO CAR INDIA.

Again another reader has lamented on the FIAT's WEB SITE, blaming the slow downloading, for which he should blame his ISP or telephone lines, and not the WEB SITE. I have downloaded and synchronized Fiat's Web Pages for offline working and it has been beautifully designed with so much details. No doubt, fearing that we Indians copy their designs faster than they themselves do for their own products, they had legitimately delayed the publicity of their WEB PAGES. Yet,TELCO was smart enough to copy their PALIO's modified design from the Italian designer who designed Palio, and launched their V2 a week before PALIO was set to be launched. They proved what FIAT feared. I am ashamed to be an Indian with such business practices in this soil. What is the need for TELCO to be so much obsessed with Indica? Are they going to starve without such a product? Or, does India need to survive on its so called image among the International Market only with such gimmicks? How long we Indians will be cheated in the name of Swadeshi products, which are neither swadeshi nor a original Vidheshi in their true sense?

It clearly shows that you belong to Tatas, who produce Indica, and it is a mischief played on Journalism in a free society, taking advantage of the freedom to write and also the ignorance of the masses. No one has ever denied that Indica is a good Indian attempt towards a car, but that does not mean that you should degrade FIAT or PALIO. Read the unbiased readers' forum in AUTOCAR INDIA, about Fiat Uno, and Palio.

At the age of 60,I made my first purchase of a car in my life last year, a Uno 1.2ELX Petrol and within a year I have purchased a PALIO 1.6 GTX, not only due to the product's uniqueness, but also due to my strong faith on FIAT, and the dealers of Fiat, in the South, ''TVS'', who are second to none in their smiling service, most modern testing facilities, and reasonable charges. If similar dealers are not available in the North, you should be ashamed of your own people, and not the one who have faithfully invested several thousand crores on Indian soil, on the basis of trust on the sons of our soil. After all, it needed a Japanese Technical Team to teach us the discipline of making a good automobile, be it a scooter or motorcycle or a car. Till they came, the Indian manufacturers were just cheating the buyers with whatever they called an automobile. Escorts are good example with their Rajdoot and Yamaha motorcycles, both manufactured in the same plant in the 90s. Rajdoot has met with a natural death before Yamaha. This is what is going to happen to Indica one day. Therefore, you need not boast too much on any Indian owned brand with so much indiscipline within the workforce, penny mindedness typical of Indian management, saving pennies on everything in the name of offering cheap products, which the others will never do.

Be neutral in your reviews and justify as a renowned auto magazine, without blindly supporting your own parent organization. Whatever you may write against Fiat, the door of any quality supplier will always be knocked at by the customer. Days are gone when tall claims on TVs and Papers were simply trusted. Customer is now open to so much education around him on any subject and he will certainly think twice before investing his hard earned money on a car. Indica can just survive on the blind DESHI fanatics.''

Yours faithfully,

R. Hariharanathan