Disclaimer: Experience-wise, I am a new driver with all of two months of suicide-inducing, insane Mumbai traffic and one Mumbai-Pune roundtrip under my right foot. Naive impressions are my own and probably have nothing in common with the official line.

On with it then.

So I convince the ancient Maharashtrian guard to open the showroom and hand me the keys. He confirms that the name on the visiting card is mine, twice (it wasn’t). Following which, he hands me two plastic things with two buttons each. This, to a man who’s car and bike keys are interchangeable for the most part. Okayyy… quick call to the dealer tells me I just need them near me to start the car. Knob where the key should be starts the car. I step outside to check if its on, it’s that quiet at idle.

Okay, I confess. I stepped outside because the car wouldn’t move at all and felt like it was wheelying. I forgot the handbrake. Why one would use the handbrake for an automatic car with the ‘P’ mode, I don’t know. But then, I’ve never driven an automatic before, much less an automatic that I couldn’t pay for with both kidneys, liver, heart, eyes, nervous system, limbs etc. Or maybe, as is the financial fashion these days, I just sell myself short.

Down the ramp and off home, which is half a kilometer away. The vehicle has sharp steering, and is certainly easier to maneuver than my decrepit Maruti 1000. Turning radius feels smaller and the power steering has a nice feel, unlike the Playstation-like Hyundai i10. Destination reached, I proceed to park in single file between an old Armada and a new Scorpio. This SUV feels big, but isn’t. It easily fits within the width of a Mahindra. CVT transmission makes parallel parking incredibly easy, and I made out like a pro.

Half an hour later, it’s off to pick up the wife from the train station. Strange man is next to her in the parking lot, singing aloud, trying to catch some attention. Large SUV crushes gravel and said romeo’s self-esteem. Meanwhile, super-enthu eccentric rich mechanic neighbour kid has hitched a ride and is playing with the console and rattling off specs from his photographic memory. Climate-control: check. It reads your mind and gently breezes over sweaty toes. Temperature control makes me shiver, but then my fridge makes me shiver; so for the naturally-insulated, mileage may vary.

Audio system is a six-speaker Rockford Fosgate with a 10″ subwoofer. It’s plenty loud and has overpowering bass. If you’re a pimp, you’ll like it. I don’t. Steering-mounted controls work as expected and the readout on the head unit is reasonable, if a bit short for anything but single-word song titles. The car came pre-loaded with greatest Goan konkani hits, which I purused. This should count as a plus.

Bells and whistles abound, as they should in a fully-loaded car. Electrical driver’s seat has enough adjustments to choreograph short performance-art skits. The car beeps and complains if you move without both seatbelts being fastened. It complains (I think) if the car is off and the headlights are on. It complains if you’re too close to something behind you (an override for this feature will be needed if you’re driving in traffic).

Sunglass receptacle on top is neat and opens up in a smooth, damped motion. Center arm-rest is comfy and has a large storage compartment beneath. CDs go into another roomy box on top of the dash, while the glove box is where it should be. All power windows, of course, and the dash is LCD and reads speed, mileage, fuel level, whether the doors are open etc. The light inside is smart and switches itself on and off depending on the situation. Very useful, and it fades out gracefully.

I DON’T GIVE A FUCK! JUST TELL ME ABOUT PERFORMANCE section

2.4 liter, 4-pot MIVEC. Disc brakes all round. Brakes rock my world. Stopping from 80 to almost zero for a 90-degree right turn was smooth and effortless, with no drama. Wife later mentioned that she slid from the right side of the back seat to the left, then fell behind the passenger seat. Must remember to take note of well-being of family members while driving fun cars.

Power is adequate, but not thrilling, even to a driver who wouldn’t know any better. The CVT is a pleasure to drive leisurely, but annoying if you want performance. Thankfully, the Outlander has paddle-shift, which are paddles of fun. Kick down two or three ratios and the engine growls and surges ahead. Relatively. It’s fast, but not brutal or scary. I had no issues punching the throttle between traffic and making quick strides before jamming the brakes at a stoplight. Still, full-auto CVT is more for smooth, worry-free drives. Use the paddles for any fun.

Suspension is decent and I had no problems flicking through the gears at 100 clicks on stone, gravel, butchered tarmac. My wife was doing 100+ on Palm Beach road and scared herself when she looked at the speedo. Effortless, quick. Cosseted, safe feeling inside with great brakes are all confidence-boosting. Handling is great as far as I can tell, and the size of the vehicle was a non-issue. Super visibility, much respect from tailgating bastards. Nobody cuts you off, and few can catch up anyway.

The car also has a 2wd/4wd/lock knob, but I didn’t use it. Lights are HID and excellent. Wipers dead silent, which is a good thing when you keep putting them on when you want to signal right. High-beam flasher took some getting used to, since the toggle and the flash motions are in the same direction (towards driver).

To sum up: Fun, fatigue-free, well-sorted and well-loaded. Looks great to me and I think the Outlander should have no problem competing with the CR-V and Captiva. At about 24 lac on road, the price is probably not outrageous. Not much else I can report based on two hours of driving.

In brief: I wouldn’t recommend an iPhone to anyone, anymore. It’s not worth the compromises, or the official price. It still makes some sense for me, since I mostly live on the Web and appreciate the touch interface. But 15 months and still no background data? Come. Fucking. On!

Update: Looks like a lot of you are having trouble with the lack of caller ID on the iPhone in India. If you’re jailbroken, try this link. It’s what I used. There’s also an Installer.app package that does the same thing, but I haven’t tested it.

Link

And it gets better from there. One of the stories is about Airtel’s “techies” being super-confident that their built-in security measures will ensure that swapping SIMs remains an unattractive alternative for iPhones bought from Airtel. Their claim is that while it may be possible for “hackers” to use Airtel’s iPhone for voice calls, they will be left out in the cold for the new, Airtel-exclusive features including Airtel Live and Google.

I don’t even know where to begin with this article. It’s grossly inaccurate in some parts and utterly banal in others. From Airtel’s perspective, what it reads like: “You can buy it and put another SIM into it, but you won’t be able to access our overpriced ringtones, news alerts, wallpapers and assorted crap. Because that shit is on an internal network. So you can’t get at it from elsewhere. We call that security.”

Tech reportage at it’s finest: by the feeble-minded, for the feeble-minded.

There is some indication that first-gen iPhones should now be unlocked on Airtel and Vodafone. Can anyone confirm this?

All in all, I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth. They’re trying to drum up some hype with midnight availability, early bookings with part payment and availability in tony areas of town, but it just isn’t the same. You can’t wish a long line of eager customers into existence with a Rs 31,000 base price. Without 3G or GPS routing.

The executive summary: 8GB for Rs 31,000 (about $730) and the 16GB will retail for Rs 36,000 to 37,000 (around $870). This is without factoring in the accompanying voice/data plans.

I don’t know how credible these numbers are, but I would not be surprised if they are accurate. Why?

• There are no subsidy models in India (or if there are, they don’t amount to much)
• There are no alternative revenue streams for mobile providers that could potentially offset a handset subsidy (VAS revenue-sharing is cream, not bread). Apple doesn’t give carriers a cut in the App Store/iTunes.
• High-end handsets launched by carriers have traditionally carried insane price tags.
• The most recent high-end launch by Airtel—the HTC Touch Diamond—retails for Rs 27,500.
• BlackBerry devices, despite requiring relatively expensive data plans, retail for a minimum of Rs 24,000.

From a brand/positioning standpoint, it would be unjust to price the iPhone 3G lower than the average BlackBerry or HTC handset. Vodafone and Airtel have painted themselves into a corner. I don’t anticipate big sales numbers—quite likely less than the erstwhile grey market for first-gen iPhones. My fervent prayer remains that I am all wrong about this, but I can’t think of another scenario, without forsaking logic.

Winner: Apple. Hustler: Carrier. Loser: User.

So why should one buy the iPhone 3G? The reasoning is pretty simple, really. If you could justify the original iPhone to yourself, there’s no way this one will be any different. It’s cheaper. Additionally, you get 3G and GPS, making for a nicely rounded-out feature set. I don’t think there are too many GPS-enabled phones out there for $199. The new firmware brings third-party apps to the party, which should be fun. Jobs was smart to feature lots of free stuff that will be available in the App Store.

MobileMe sounds very nice indeed, but my data is increasingly—or near-totally—on the Google cloud now, and I wouldn’t want to pay money to move out from a free, and perfectly workable suite of services. I’d like to believe that Google will put out a syncing app for their services as well, but it may be wishful thinking, given the evident conflict of interest.

While GPS and all the possibilities that follow are nice, they won’t really make a big difference for us in the 2.5th world, i.e, no routing in Google Maps.

So it boils down to price. For the amount you’d pay for a typical feature-phone, you’ll soon be able to buy an iPhone. I’m curious about how Apple will enforce a single global price, given that in markets like India, carrier subsidies are not as big as they are in the USA. Both Vodafone and Airtel have announced their intent to bring the device to India.

I couldn’t care less about Flash support, but GPS is going to be huge. Location-based coolness is the new cool. I just hope I can get a decent trade-in for old faithful.