BHPian vamsi.vadrevu recently shared this with other enthusiasts: What a wonderful thread! I’m sure every petrol-head here has lasting memories from their first drive, and I’m no different. I learnt driving at the age of 22 with the help of my close friend, office colleague and my room-mate in PG where I was staying! He spent about a week giving me lessons with our brand new Alto K10 and another two weeks guiding me from the passenger seat before finally setting me loose into Hyderabad’s chaotic traffic all on my own. I had known the theory of driving long before and was fully aware of how clutches worked because of the 2 wheeler, but having a trusted friend guiding you when you’re about to make mistakes during the first few crucial lessons is an immense relief. Partly because the car was new and partly because the embarrassment if I scratch a brand new car would have been unbelievable! My friend was an incredibly patient teacher and his style of teaching was “if I make a mistake, he’d pull the hand brake in an instant and bring the car to a halt”. That threat of immediate halt really increased my awareness and eagerness to make no mistakes whatsoever! He paid very close attention to whether I was paying attention to the road, the signs, where I was going, what I was doing with the gears, if my steering input was swaying when I was in the act of changing gears! Attention detail was his thing! I’m very glad he was my teacher! I was so consumed by the thrill of learning that I literally dreamt of clutch control and accelerator pedal inputs – I think half my driving skills were assimilated in my sleep during the first few weeks after buying the car! This was back in 2013. I had just graduated, was living in a PG in Hyderabad with friends, while my father was posted in Karnataka and my elder brother was away for work elsewhere. That year, we decided to buy our very first family car. The irony? None of us knew how to drive-neither my father, my brother, nor me! Still, the decision was made, and the car chosen was an Maruti Alto K10 in a shade called ecru beige (which was really just a fancy way of saying golden). It was the most practical and safe choice because it was the more powerful version of the best selling car at that time. We did try to convince my father to go for a Suzuki Swift, but he was set on buying the Alto K10 because that was what he considered to be appropriate for our use case. Since the car was going to stay in Andhra Pradesh for most of its life (even though my father was in Karnataka at that time), my father asked me to take the delivery in Hyderabad. I went along with the same friend who was teaching me, and while he drove it back to the PG, I was obsessively eager to begin my lessons with him! In the following days, driving became an obsession. I’d skip office just to practice clutch control and run rounds in the new car. The amount of times I’d stalled and burnt the clutch makes me cringe with pain but the car never complained! The factory clutch lasted more than 70,000km even though 3 different people learnt to drive in it. I researched everything for my learning-perfect driving posture, steering grip, braking techniques, even “the right way” to launch smoothly from a stop, even a routine on the sequence of events to get driving like adjusting seat, mirrors, seatbelt, clutch check, hand brake check, engine start, hand brake release, gear in and clutch out! I must have read the Alto’s user manual more times than I read any of my college textbooks. If scientists had studied me then, they’d have called me crazy! My mornings started with two-hour drives around the empty stretches of Hitech City, 20-25 km of pure freedom. I designed my own “driving drills” such as – Hill start with zero rollback – 50 repetitionsPerfect U-turn with seamless steering return – 50 repetitions5 cm micro-movement and stop on a dime – 50 repetitionsI even simulated panic braking and tricky traffic scenarios, training both myself and the car to react in sync. I used to place markers and ensure my parking skills were perfect. Reversing practice used to take a lot of patience because it’s done at very slow pace and once, you’re used to driving fast, parking feels like a chore! But I gamified it! I have a mad obsession in lining up the car to the lines and always parking it bonnet out in reverse because I’d researched that it was the right way to park it. If you need to take the car out quickly, you should not be stuck reversing out of a spot. You should simply start and drive off! Slowly but surely, the Alto became an extension of me. I tuned myself to its every quirk, and it tuned itself to mine. I was so confident within 2 months that I ventured onto national highways and finally took the car back to Karnataka where my father was posted. I would have ventured earlier if not for my mother’s dire warnings about the dangers of driving on highways! I consider myself a safe driver but my parents still think I drive a bit too fast for the road after driving for more than 12 years. I subsequently taught my father and my elder brother how to drive in the same car! That Alto K10 remains incredibly close to my heart-it’s the car that made me a driver, a petrol head, the designated driver for my family and even extended family and the know-it-all person when it comes to automobiles. It sparked the automotive zeal in me. To this day, I still try to practice heal toe down shifting (I still haven’t quite perfected it yet!) and other ways to make my driving smoother and more “mechanically sympathetic”. I truly believe that driving with mechanical sympathy and understanding the inner workings of a car makes us better drivers. Knowing my machines in and out, and taking care of them gives me immense joy! All this started with that Alto K10. Even today, I find excuses to take it out for a spin and whenever I take it out, it feels like slipping into a glove. I know exactly how it’ll react, and I can stop it within millimeters of where I want. In 2023, I finally bought a car of my own. But no matter what I drive, my father’s Alto K10 will always be “the first love”- that cute little golden hatchback that gave me the taste of freedom on 4 wheels! I feel like I owned and operated it more than my father! I still take it for servicing and attend to its every need and we have no intention of selling it ever! It will be run into the ground or when government decides to scrap it! Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.
