This highway test was initially published in the September 2007 situation of Autcar India.
Why really do not you try this one,” he claims, egging us on carefully. We look over our shoulders to a steep climb that sales opportunities to a kind of ledge 10 ft higher than the dust path beneath. Definitely, we have misunderstood.
We glance back at him, but he smiles, nods and gesticulates in the exact direction, pointing to the major. Definitely this ex-army person and tank commander has taken go away of his senses almost certainly the outcome of all those superior-velocity tank shells staying fired only inches absent from his head. All that pounding need to have left a deep scar, simply because the only way we can get up that slope ourselves is on all fours! Nonetheless, he appears to be assured. Some head-scratching, soul-searching and dry gulps later, we gingerly level the Axe in the direction of the ridge.
There is no worry of grounding the nose, as the angle of assault at the front is an pretty much wall-climbing 70 degrees and ground clearance is a lofty 350mm.
So we select 4-wheel-push lower and electrical power up the pile of rocks and shale, as the nose of the Axe points skywards, the motor rumbling and booming absent. The Axe’s huge off-highway tyres claw the earth and it edges ahead. . . but then stops. By now the angle of our ascent listed here is so steep, our pounds is equally distributed between the backrest and the seat, and there’s nothing to see forward, only sky!
“Use additional electrical power and additional speed the up coming time,” yells our acting drill sergeant and this time the Axe does make it, like a major lizard clambering, scrambling up a rock facial area. This is an off-roader, guaranteed, but no one stated anything at all about rock climbing. Impressed? We had been surprised! And this was only the commencing. Only one facet of this vehicle’s huge efficiency envelope.
In the previous, Autocar India has examined our Indian-made Key Fight Tank, the Arjun and Hindustan Aeronautics’ Innovative Mild Helicopter. This time we have a thing additional terrestrial and common, but equally Indian. And really do not imagine this car or truck is any a lot less exotic or beguiling in comparison. It might glance like a cross between a taxi driver’s worst nightmare and the common American Humvee, and that’s what it is, but underneath its rough exterior is ample superior-tech to make a Bentley blush.