Test Driving Tata Bolt Car to Tigers Point, Lonavala

What gives you an adrenaline rush? 

A) Social Media? 

B) Good food? 

C) Good Company? 

D) Long drives?

E) All Of the above

Clearly, for me the choice would be E. If you concur the same, read on....

Well, this one is about A Sunday Well Spent at #BoltDrives with Bolt from Tata Motors in association with BlogAdda. It is also about taking your love for cars, speeds, driveaways, brand association and blogging a notch ahead.

If you were following me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, you would already know. If you are not, follow me now :)

When Tata launched a new car #Bolt last January, we could not resist the temptation to check out the new machine in town. You can read about my detailed view and feature at my blog Numerounity, the post was- 

INDIA GET, SET WITH NEW TATA BOLT

I loved the car so much that I have even written a poem featuring the different features and specifications of the car. So last weekend when I was invited to attend the #BoltDrives with a lovely team of #BlogAdda, I could not resist the temptation further even if that made me up and awake on a Sunday morning at 5:00 am.

About the Meet

Team Tata Motors and Blogadda have handpicked around 20+ blogger across the length and breadth of Mumbai city to experience the drive. We all were invited to meet at the beautiful Cafe Infinito at BKC wherein we were assigned to our respective team (s). We were treated to some lovely breakfast and post that we were taken through a brief introduction to fellow team members and a detailed presentation from the Digital and marketing team of Tata Motors.

Team 1: Revotron

My team, Henceforth team R1 was a lovely bunch comprising of the Deepak, Disha and Anuja from the Blogadda team who took the task of chaperoning we lovely bloggers. 

We were the first to get the flag off and embark on our journey to our first pit stop at the near MMRDA ground. Here are few glimpses-

The Drive that Was

Okay, so it was not your mundane "get in the car drive to Lonavala- have Lunch- click Pictures and back" event. The entire drive was segregated in 5 parts with 5 different pit stops starting from-

1) MMRDA Grounds- Lap testing @ Reclamation

2) MMRDA to Pune Expressway- Food Court

3) Food Court to Lonavala Triose at The Dhaba

4) Triose to Tiger's Point Lonavala

5) Lonavala to Cafe Coffee day and back to Infinito

The first pit stop at MMRDA Grounds was for suspension testing, wherein Disha took behind the wheel and took the laps while Deepak tried to "connect the dots" on the graph given to him for testing the car's suspension power over the rough terrain of the laid over patch inclusive of rumble strips. 

Post that we hit the highway in all glory, breezing through the roads, capturing pictures, videos, singing songs, flirting with #CaptainBolt. here we go-

Sing aloud #SoorajDoobaHaiYaaro

We stopped at our 3rd Pitstop at "The Dhaba" at Triose to heave some breaths, cool our feets off, grab a lovely Punjabi lunch, meet some new amazing co-bloggers and co-riders. Oh yes, we did give our Video #SoundBytes and much to the surprise of my team, I still chose Martial art Maverick, Superstar #JackieChan to go for a long drive, instead of Shah Rukh Khan :P

From R1 to P1

Post lunch, before hitting to #TigersPoint, we changed our cars. This time we moved to much powerful [Deepak loved driving this one over R1] Quadrajet 1.3 diesel Tata Bolt. The AC was quite powerful this time and by the time we reached home, I was down with cold ;)

Here's few glimpses from #TigersPoint Lonavala including a lovely group picture with entire bloggers and the crew.

Mode changing

We started with City mode and moved to eco mode as we hit the highway. Next change was the surreal "Sports mode" that was so awesome that we did not bother to move back to any other mode till the last pitstop. 

Captain Bolt and the #TeamDirty

Another novel concept that Team Blogadda introduced was the "live yet virtual" Captain Bolt who called us a couple of times to give certain instructions and check our comfort levels. He was surprised with the fact that we have already done some of those things including giving a voice command to car stereo in Punjabi accent successfully.

Well well, captain Bolt was a pleasant voice and a good voice over, nameless companion who we thoroughly teased throughout the journey to find his name. Monit tweeted hinting if he is RJ Jeeturaj, well he wasn't. Now do not ask why team dirty, it was just a "Figure of speech" :D

My experience: Who doesn't love the driveways, company of good friends, taking their brand experience to next level, having quality time? Well, I definitely love. And this meet was all about it! I liked the way team Blogadda did attention to detailing and made every task in this process, every move in the day, a lovely experience to cherish. Right from the beginning, everything was well planned and well executed. The meet was not mere "tick in the box" but had quite a heart to it. 

The low-downs: Frankly speaking, I had no complaints about the overall meet. It was only the weather that played Villain. If you recall my other driveway when we drove from Pune to Lavasa, the weather was awesome and did all the trick. This time the weather was not on our side and being that sultry, it took a toll on few of us. For eg- I fell sick and that is the reason you could not see a lot of pictures here. Next time.

Homeward Ho..The tired us were driven back to Mumbai amid a lovely sundowner

Clicks from my Camera. Image Courtesy: Yours Truly, Numerounity

Overall, the meet was indeed a day well spent and Tata Bolt, is indeed a car you must consider once before making your next car purchase decision especially the Diesel version. It was not a paid assignment that you can mistake it for advertising. In fact, the goodies by Tata were awful too. However, being a dweller of traffic laden city like Mumbai and fond of spaces, I found the car quite interesting. Go ahead, take your trial today and yes, being the consumer, you are the king. So make your choice.

If you find the car good, go ahead and Get Set #Bolt!