Car India goes off-roading in the first leg of Tata Motors’ Full Throttle Trails
As automotive journalists, it is our job to narrate the thrilling action and manoeuvres in various rallies.
We are familiar with the names of the rallyists, can recall their championship standings any time and are up to date with the sport’s lingo. However, I hadn’t got the chance to go off-roading in a car myself. That is, until Tata Motors invited us recently to the first-ever leg of their Trails event, when I got behind the wheel of a Sumo Grande as one of the participants. I wasn’t the only first timer, though, the event being designed for rookies.
Tata Motors have launched an adventure sport brand, called Full Throttle, which includes two properties. First is the single-day, timed, off-roading event, called Full Throttle Trails, and the other is Full Throttle Experience, under which off-roading expeditions are held over a number of days.
Full Throttle will host 21 such Trails in different cities across the country. The first leg of the inaugural edition was held in Chandigarh on May 27 and saw a healthy participation of 35 vehicles. Participation is restricted to Tata Motors’ SUV and MUV customers, who go through a series of off-roading challenges. The time taken to complete the challenge is recorded on a time-sheet to determine the best performers.
The first 10-km drive after the flag-off was the transport section on public roads. I had a companion in my car, who had some experience of driving off-road. We entered Punjab at half distance and took a left from Mullanpur. A short distance ahead, we went off the road and were guided to the challenge section by signboards. Our convoy gathered at the marshal’s post where our starting times were noted.
My car was lined up in fourth at the start line and the dust rising from the winding road ahead had raised the excitement by the time I was cleared to pass. I could feel the reduced traction as we got going and the engine had to be revved harder to push the car over the loose sand. As the cloud of dust in front of me cleared away, I saw a Tata Safari stuck at a turn. The trail was a narrow road with hillocks on both the sides, so I had no option but to stop behind it. As the Safari moved, I stepped on the accelerator to realise that we were sinking in the sand. The Safari was an all-wheel drive vehicle, but our Sumo Grande, being a two-wheel drive MUV, had far lesser traction. We had managed to get stuck just 200 metres into the first challenge! Luckily, the organisers had arranged for tractors to pull out the stuck vehicles, using a tow-rope. We had learnt a valuable lesson: never lose momentum.
The next challenge was a slush bed, which we were supposed to cross. We increased our speed before entering the slush and kept revving the engine until we were through. The car was sliding all over and even jumped over a small rock, but we managed to thrash our way through.
The next challenge was a hillock with a huge pit on one side. What made it more interesting was the sharp left-hand turn just before the incline, which would slow the car’s momentum. I drove to the extreme right hand side in first gear before turning left for the incline. As the front wheels climbed up, all I could see through the windscreen was the sky. The rear wheels struggled in the sand for a bit, but we made it to the top of the hillock. However, our challenge was far from over. The decline was steep and had to be perfect or else we would have turned turtle inside the pit for sure. However, we managed to come down from the narrow trail unhurt.
Going ahead, we came up to a field where almost 10 cars were stuck in different places. We switched off the air conditioner in our car to utilise the car’s full potential to force our way through the stuck cars. However, after covering about 500 metres we met the same fate as others and had to be pulled out by a tractor for the second time. We now had just 300 metres to conquer before the end and we were up for the challenge. We bounced and skidded sideways, the steering wheel going haywire as the car steered itself, but I kept the pedal floored until the wheels rolled on to the asphalt on the other side.
It had taken us about three hours to cover this small five-km off-road section, but every minute had been exciting. I had learnt quite a few tricks about driving off-road and could see the confidence on the faces of the participants. It had taught us to judge the capabilities of the vehicle as much as we had discovered our own. For more information and registrations, log on to www.tatamotorsfullthrottle.com.
Story: Piyush Sonsale
Photography: Piyush Sonsale, Tata Motors
