Spiralling Costs
From the first of this month, the prices of two-wheelers will go up as the result of a rise in the cost of manufacturing, which, in turn, has gone up due to the rising cost of fuel and gas, which has a direct bearing on the cost of raw material and transport.
The Bike India Awards were presented last month. We have been presenting these awards for the past 21 years. When I look back upon how the contenders have changed over this period of time, it becomes apparent that in 2006, most of them were commuter motorcycles and scooters, with only a sprinkling of 250-cc to 350-cc motorcycles. In contrast to that, we did not have a single 100-cc motorcycle for the jury round this time, the smallest capacity bike being a 125-cc one. Even the scooters this year were 150 cc. In keeping with the trend of the times, we also had electric adventure motorcycles and electric scooters.
The Royal Enfield Guerrilla has received an update. The notable change is a transition from dual-purpose tyres to road-specific ones and this has made a big difference in the handling of this motorcycle. It feels planted and the grip offered by the new tyres is better than that from the earlier dual-purpose ones.
The Indian motor sport fraternity has suffered a double blow, first with the demise of Sanjay Sharma (Hardy), head of JK Tyre Motorsport, in February, and the loss of Hari Singh, five-time national rally champion, last month. Hardy was instrumental in Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandhok making it to Formula 1 and Gaurav Gill to the World Rally Championship (WRC). I had known Hari Singh since his rallying days and I got to know him even better when I started running the GT Cup concurrently with the JK Tyre National Championship races. He was always willing to help everyone. They say that god takes away the good people first. My heartfelt condolences to his family. Keep rallying in peace, my friend, till we meet again. The sad part is that the accident that claimed his life could have been avoided.
