<%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> Autocar India Ford Drive 2009
www.india.ford.com                                
Ford India and Autocar India are on an epic 20,000km drive across the country. The 'Ikon Cross Country Drive' will pass through 26 state capitals and three union territories of India and will take a total of 46 days to cover the entire distance.

The drive was flagged off from Ford’s manufacturing facility in Chennai on 22nd April 2009. A Ford Ikon with the new 1.4-litre DuraTorq, common-rail TDCi engine under its hood, is the chosen vehicle for this pan-India drive. The car is a standard Ikon diesel, without any modifications what-so-ever. The car will be undergoing service checks at stopovers at Ford's widespread authorized service centres en-route the 20000km run.
The journey will test both man and machine as it traverses through varied and extreme conditions. From the sapping heat of Rajasthan to the numbing chill of the Himalayas; from rutted mountain trails to smooth expressways; from the gridlock of Hosur Road to the runway-like Rajpath; the drive will encounter the complete tapestry of climatic, geographical and road conditions.
The car is manned by a two person crew from Autocar India who are rotated every six days. KPMG have been appointed as independent auditors to validate the proceedings and the end result of the drive program.

The team will monitor and log every parameter of the car’s performance including fuel consumption, tyre wear, and consumables like engine oil, brake fluid etc to establish its true-world fuel efficiency and cost of ownership after 20,000km.
The drive will end on 6th June 2009 at the Ford India's manufacturing plant in Chennai.
 
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Day 14 Udaipur - Jaipur

Today we began our day with a shoot at the ‘Udaipur City Palace’ and just like any other photo shoot this shoot too took us a while to get over with. As we progressed towards the later half of the morning around at 11:30 AM we started off for Jaipur which is about 450 kms from Udaipur.

The regular route to Jaipur is the NH-79 which is a part of the GQ, however some miscalculations of the GPS made us perform a u-turn and deviate from the regular route. Now our new longer route took us onto the NH-76 via Kota which added another 200kms to our journey. The highway towards Kota is four-lane thanks to which we maintained good speeds. Keeping up the pace, we made good progress towards Kota after which we joined NH-12 - a two-lane highway which slowed progress to some extent. A huge accident involving a truck meant we crawled for nearly an hour and that cost us a lot of time and some kpls. At 11.00pm, we finally reached Jaipur.

On this particular run we were running the second Ikon on full time AC in order to gauge the difference in the fuel economy of both the Ikons in slightly higher temperatures than usual. On tanking up the lead Ikon returned 27.33kpl and second Ikon gave 23.24kpl not bad really considering that ambient temperatures were in the high 40s.