Driving in India means taking your life in your hands, writes Ben Oliver, but you could do a whole lot worse than invest in an Indian-made motor
NOTHING CAN prepare you for your first taste of Indian rush-hour driving - nothing.
If your first 50 yards through downtown Mumbai or Delhi don't turn you into a sweating, swearing, wide-eyed, whimpering mess, you're a stronger man than I am.
First, there's the intense sun and heat; 35 degrees and often more, even in November. Then there's the noise: a constant cacophony of horns underlaid by the loud clatter of scooter and rickshaw engines and, below that, the bassy blast of ancient diesel truck and bus engines.
There's the taste and smell of the dust the traffic throws up and the thick black clouds of soot the buses put out.
And there's a bizarre variety of distractions - from the vast, magnificent but incongruous Victorian edifices left by the British to the rough tarpaulin tents slung up on the verge, home to migrant families whose grime-blackened children dance, begging, through the traffic.
But, if driving, you don't take your eyes from the road for one second, because you're convinced that you'd die if you did. The other traffic seems to come at you entirely randomly and at huge speed, flashing past from every direction in a series of millimetric near-misses.
Red lights are a suggestion rather than a rule; to make your way across a junction, you just aim for your exit and drive - even if it involves barrelling headlong into a stream of oncoming traffic.
And what traffic! As well as cars, buses and battered 1950s Fiat taxis, there are handcarts piled with rubbish, bicycles with goods stacked over the rider's head, families of four per motorcycle, a dozen people crammed into an auto-rickshaw, trucks so overladen they can barely crack 30mph and, out of town, the occasional camel and elephant.
To a novice, it's incomprehensible how they (mostly) manage to avoid one another, and you.
In more disciplined driving cultures, we're taken by surprise by bad driving and often unable to react in time to avoid a crash. But here, they expect the worst - and are ready for it.
Indian drivers seem to travel in a higher, almost supernatural state of consciousness, seldom indicating and never replacing the wing mirrors that last approximately a day. Instead, they use constant honking to locate the other vehicles around them.
India has one of the world's worst road safety records, but you're still amazed by how few accidents you see. Despite chaotic traffic, chronic congestion and pollution and the constant threat of a messy death, India's car industry is in the midst of a boom that will soon see it eclipse all major European markets for production and sales and join China as one of the new automotive superpowers, with only Japan and the rapidly declining US left in its sights.
In the mid-1980s, India was producing just 40,000 cars annually - but this decade its output has skyrocketed, growing by 20 per cent per year. With sales flat or declining in their traditional markets, almost all the major carmakers have established an Indian outpost.
Growth has slowed this year, as in most emerging car markets, but sales are still expected to hit nearly two million - by comparison with plunging sales in Europe and the US, India remains one of the car industry's few causes for optimism.
But why are Indians so desperate to drive? For starters, public transport isn't an appealing alternative, at least in Mumbai. Its overloaded suburban rail network has the world's highest passenger density: at rush hour there are 16 standing passengers per square metre. The busiest section of track carries 2.6 million people per day, and trains designed to take 1,700 people are crammed with 5,000. If commuters can't fit inside, they ride on the roof.
A motorcycle might be quicker and cheaper than a car, but it's even more dangerous; nobody here wants to carry their child on the fuel tank or rear rack of their motorbike, so if they can trade up, they will.
India's fast-growing economy and middle class means millions more can afford to. But two events are about to supercharge India's car industry.
The first is the launch of the Tata Nano. The cheapest car currently on sale is the Maruti 800, based on one of its partner Suzuki's ancient hatchbacks and priced at around €3,000.
But early next year Tata, the vast tea-to-IT conglomerate which this year bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford, will launch the Nano. At just €1,600 it isn't just a new car, but a new kind of car - so much cheaper than anything else that it will, at a stroke, make motoring affordable to hundreds of millions who, until now, had to content themselves with a bicycle or scooter.
The second big change is that while until now India has been flat-out satisfying domestic demand, it is about to start selling its cars to us.
Forget the CityRover - the appalling re-badged Tata hatchback that MG Rover misguidedly offered in Europe in its dying days - the new Suzuki Alto and Nissan Pixo five-door city cars, launched together at the Paris motor show in September and essentially the same car beneath their different family noses, will be built in Maruti-Suzuki's bright new factory in Delhi.
Around 50,000 will be sent to Europe each year, and the Indian government's plan for its car industry aims for that figure to grow tenfold by 2016.
Buyers will want to know if the quality of an Indian-made car can match those made in established markets.
"If we're going to make our mark in new markets, we have some tough work ahead," says Maruti's KD Singh. "The Japanese had to prove themselves when they started exporting. Our time will come."
So are they any good? We flew to Delhi to drive the new Alto. Prettier than its Nissan sibling, it will be priced to compete with the Hyundai i10 and the Toyota Aygo.
It's a five-door only, with a one-litre, three-cylinder 67bhp engine with good economy at 62.7mpg - exactly the kind of car Indian buyers demand.
It's far from perfect, but flaws are down to design and engineering work done in Japan. The rear seat space is cramped and the boot would struggle to hold four full shopping bags.
It's clear where costs have been cut; the rear windows pop out rather than wind down, the doors feel light and flimsy and some of the interior plastics have a hard, shiny, cheap finish.
But it drives well, pulling harder than that power output would suggest, with a relatively refined ride over poor surfaces.
The Indian plant has done its job well; cabin plastics might not be costly, but they're neatly assembled with no rough edges. We suspect that Suzuki and Nissan wouldn't put their badge on something that didn't match Japanese standards.
Have no hesitation in buying an Indian-made car; as its car industry booms, there will soon be plenty more on offer. Just be very glad you don't have to drive one through downtown Delhi.