New Hyundai Santro gets India’s best AMT

The Santro is back! And that has to be the big news of the month even though it is very different from what the original Santro was. The similarity perhaps is that Hyundai is pegging it as the quintessential Indian family car, very much like it had become in its earlier life. With Shah Rukh

Khan back as the face of the new Santro, I see no reason why it should not do well. Not because of the King of Bollywood but because of what Hyundai has done with the car

– made it spacious, packed it with features and added perhaps India’s best automated manual transmission to it. We have driven the car for this issue and have been very impressed.

Also in this issue is another car or rather SUV that is very impressive and that is the BMW X5. The German brand has taken a giant leap forward with its conventional cars with the X5 as much as it probably did with its ‘i’ cars a few years ago. It may look similar from the outside but there is a huge change under the skin and also with many of the things that have been traditionally BMW for a couple of decades now.

There are also facelifts for the Figo/Aspire family of cars as there are for the Go and Go+ and we have also driven two really high end SUVs, one an icon and another one a totally new one from an iconic manufacturer. Yes, we are talking about the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen and the Lamborghini Urus.

However, another car that is back is the Honda CR-V. It has been one of my favourite cars since it was first launched in India and I was looking forward to seeing how it stacked up against the competition and we put it against the Tucson and the Tiguan to see how it would fare and you can read all about that in this issue as well.

All my best wishes for the festive season and hope you drive and ride safe. Seatbelts save lives so do make it a habit to belt up no matter which seat you are occupying in the vehicle.