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The last two weeks have been mentally, physically and financially draining:
Mentally –  thinking of all the permutations and outcomes is tasking
Physically – checking the markets every 3-4 hours means I’ve gotten very little continuous sleep
Financially – watching your 401(k) go down the toilet is no fun 

Enough of all that non-sense, let’s talk about Ferrari’s…The highly anticipated Ferrari California had a sneak peak in Los Angeles and Maranello on September 22 (I believe Wall Street was melting down) and the car is really sweeeeeet looking. The official launch was yesterday at the Paris Auto Show.

A couple of my friends sent me some random pics of Ferrari’s (I request if you have any please forward them to me). The first 3 pics were taken at Tokyo’s Narita Airport – 430 Modena. The fourth picture is a swarm of Ferrari’s, my only question who invited the piker with the Porsche to the party?

(hat tip to Pankaj C. and P. Nath for the pics)

On this day 3 years back I moved to India for business and it’s been quite an adventure ever since. Working in India has a whole set of challenges that sometimes make you wonder WTF!!! There is yoga and exercise to manage the stress but what I usually do is fire up my iPod and listen to one of my favorite lines from Steve Job’s 2005 Stanford commencement speech:

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

Spotting a Lamborghini LP640 in India is about as common as seeing Halley’s Comet. The LP640 is the big bull in the Lamborghini stable, in India the car goes for about Rs. 3 CR (about USD 750,000).  So imagine how I felt when I heard one of these beauties got into a major accident in Bombay sometime in May 2008.

The funny part is that NO ONE seems to know anything about it.  This is surprising in a country where the press likes to describe in excrutiating detail the movements of anybody with money. So I find it hard to believe that an LP640 gets demolished on a public road and everyone seems to be clueless on who owns the car or what really happened.

UPDATE: Aug 19, 2008 - The car was owned by Hitesh Bhagat, his grandfather Kalyanji brought matka gambling to Bombay in 1962 and was referred to as the “Matka King.” Matka is a form of gambling that he popularized. Hitesh’s father Suresh was killed last month in an apparent move to take over the family business, Hitesh is a suspect in the killing as is his mother…drama!

Ferrari sent two 612 Scagliettis to India for the Magic India Discovery tour. The 12-stage event starts and ends in Mumbai, covering 7,000 miles of the subcontinent along the way, kicking off on February 25 and ending on May 8. The video and pics are from the launch at the Taj Palace.

Pics from the event

After much speculation Ratan Tata, Chairman of the Tata Group and Tata Motors, unveiled the Tata Nano, the most inexpensive car in the world at USD 2500. The idea for the USD 2500 car was conceived 5 years ago when commodity prices for things such as steel were much cheaper but Ratan Tata said “a promise is a promise” and Tata kept to it.

There are many pictures of the car floating on the web, but the picture shown is exactly the target audience the Nano is going after. The family whose primary transportation is a scooter or a 2nd car for a family that lives in an urban setting.

The minute the car was announced in India, Indian’s could understand why people would buy this car and could end up changing the game on the worldwide automotive scene. However, when reading comments from several of the int’l car blogs, it was clear some people don’t get it:

“..this car sucks! 0-60? how many hours? ”

“…This is disaster for the world, and India and China… smog dispensing, CO2 emitting legions of tiny, polluting microcars”

The Nano is a rear-wheel drive, 2-cylinder, 623 cc, 33 hp engine. Engine is rear mounted. Tailpipe emission performance exceeds current regulatory requirements, and the Nano has a lower overall pollution level than two-wheelers made in India.

This car is NOT for:
- someone looking for performance
- someone looking to impress
- someone wanting a car for Sunday speed trials
- someone looking for a car to take on long drives

But instead…for a family of 6 on a scooter – as shown above.