URBAN ASSAULT VEHICLES

The most demanding and deadly war zone of them all, the urban thoroughfare, the various M G Roads to be precise, demands highly specialised combat machinery. Sirish Chandran finds himself drafted into the battlefront with a delectable spread to choose from. Forced to pick one, what will he settle for, after all this is a life and death situation (?)Confused? Let Team OVERDRIVE answer every question of Yours.

The latest entrant into the non-geared scooter segment, the Honda Activa has taken the market by storm and infused life into this long dormant segment. So is it that good or are we simply blinded by the Honda tag?

For a while the best non-geared scooter in this country, the Kinetic Marvel has come a long way and now sports an extra 10 cubic centimetres to keep her ahead of the pack. Does it do the job?

Successor to the original (legendary) Kinetic Honda, the Kinetic Zoom ZX gets an extra 10cc for supposedly improved mileage without any power drop. But does it cut ice in the presence of more modern scoots here?

The first product in this segment from the Bajaj Auto stables and definitely the best looking. But can its 4-stroke powerplant keep up with the large-hearted two and four-strokers we have on test here?

Men, real men ride bikes, that's for sure. But then we can't expect our women to ride our bikes or worse still, use the pathetic public transport to get from point A to destination B. That we would hang ourselves before letting our women get anywhere close to our bikes is a different matter altogether, valuing our bikes more that anything or anybody else. So then how do our women commute? Before zeroing on that, let's deduce what the ladies expect from a set of wheels. Considering the present state of congestion in our cities, a car is definitely out of the question so we are left with just two wheels in the equation.

The key attribute the ideal two-wheeler should possess is absolute ease of operation, which translates into a self-starter, no gears to fiddle around with and a light stiff chassis and optimised suspension for easy manoeuvrability and good ride comfort. Style also plays an important role; after all haven't we sometimes reached a party five hours late because madam was busy fixing her face? Then of course since we, the men, would also use this two-wheeler quite often, decent Performance, decent Fuel Efficiency and decent ride and handling should also figure in the package.

A Royal Enfield Bullet is then definitely out of the equation. What the lady needs and wants is an ungeared scooter that meets all the above requirements. That brings us to four prime contenders, the Kinetic Zoom ZX, the Kinetic Marvel, the Bajaj Saffire and the Honda Activa, all of which meet these requirements to a 'T'.
So which scooter is the best for her (and for you too)? A tough question intricacies of which we shall unravel over the course of this test. Don your helmets, for it is the most comprehensive scooter war that you are about to witness here.