The Grand i10's engine may be small, but holds its own on the highway
But a smooth ride it wasn’t to be. Once we started nearing Kolhapur, the clouds burst open and the triple digit speeds we had been maintaining through the morning had reduced to about 40kmph, on a four-laned highway! When it rains in these parts of the country, it really pours. Visibility was horrendous and the roads had nasty surprises in store for us but the Grand i10 stayed planted through the deluge. I was impressed by the fact that despite being a city car that runs on light small wheels, the suspension setup was well balanced to take highway driving comfortably in its stride. As you cross over in to Karnataka and the road opens up, the traffic thins out and the surface doesn’t throw up any surprises. Good riddance, we had Maharashtra’s terrible roads behind us.
Despite the heavy rains, we could make up plenty of lost time now. The Grand i10 is not a particularly heavy
car so the 1.1-litre engine is more than adequate to maintain good highway speeds all along. Diesel engines have always been synonymous with commercial vehicles because of their strong torque reserves, but in the past decade, this virtue and the fact that they are a lot lighter on the wallet as far as running costs go have made them popular among passenger cars as well. The modern CRDi engine in the Grand i10 is one of the best small diesel engines in the market — it is efficient, torquey and not noisy for a 3-cylinder. It has, without a doubt, been a game changer for Hyundai’s small cars.
Interestingly enough, the first car to feature the new CRDi diesel technology in India was the Accent Viva in 2002. It was the most powerful mainstream diesel engine at the time, making 82bhp and 187Nm of torque from its turbocharged CRDi 3-pot motor. The power, not to mention efficiency, set the ball rolling for the acceptance of diesel engines in mainstream automobiles.