75 years of Jeep - An all terrain adventure

The first car is flagged off for the gruelling final test; Finalists navigated the tricky course in WagonRs.

The finalists were offered advice about navigating the technical bits of the course, like the slalom challenge.

Pre-driving checks were an important parameter.

Placement of the cones simulated the tight lanes seen in many Indian towns.

Each finalist was accompanied by an IDTR instructor.

The Reverse S-bend was one of the most challenging manoeuvres for the participants.

The course at IDTR was technical and challenging.

Actor Boman Irani, Jayant Chaudhary and RS Kalsi, executive director, Maruti, with the winner.

Institute of Driving and Traffic Research instructors took the participants on a walk-through of the course.

Tricky H-turns had to be taken in tight spaces.

Sumit Sawhney, managing director of Renault India, flags off the mileage run in Delhi NCR.

Filling the tank to the brim in Delhi-NCR.

Sticking to the slow lane doesn’t always help; there’s traffic in all of them.

Well that’s another way of making sure maximum mileage is achieved.

It’s all about momentum. If you can’t go through it, just go around it.

To avoid idling for too long, toll stops needed to be cleared quickly.

It was crucial to keep the engine running at a constant 1,000rpms to be in the most economical power zone.

Staying hydrated is very important, especially on drives in hot weather with the windows up and air-conditioner off.

Chai stops seemed like heaven after a whole night of continuous driving.

After hours of being parked in the sun, even the car needed to breathe.

One of the few times that entering a traffic-laden Mumbai actually seemed inviting.

Happy homecoming amidst a flurry of flag waving.

Just three bars of fuel for 1388.4km; that’s sure to get a few heads scratching.

Time for the officials to remove the seals and figure out how much fuel had been consumed.

The GLE could be driven as the ‘crow’ or rather plane flies.

Straight roads and clear skies allow us to eke the most out of these big toys for big boys.

The GLE displaces sand by the tractor load as we corner around desert shrubs.

The three-pointed star shines bright in the wilderness.

Splendour among ruins: The GLE 450 AMG Coupe rests by the remnants of what was once a grand palace.

A bird’s eye view of what we do.

The uncluttered tail announces the car’s credentials.

Harrier: A slow forward flight motion, the harrier involves positioning the nose high at about 45 degrees. This is executed by constantly balancing the throttle and the lift against headwinds.

Prop-hang: One of the toughest aerobatic manoeuvres to pull off. The pilot balances the throttle against gravity to suspend the airplane mid-air, vertically – it is almost like flying the airplane like a helicopter, with the propeller serving as the blades.

Knife-edge: Involves flying the airplane on its side with its body perpendicular to the ground. The difficulty with this manoeuvre lies in the tendency of the airplane to turn when banked on its side and in losing altitude.

Inverted flight: The pilot rolls the plane around so that it is flying inverted. Essentially, everything is reversed, making this manoeuvre much harder than it seems to be. It gets more complicated the closer the airplane is taken to the ground.

The young pilot flies his plane from the car’s cockpit.

The wooden propeller is carefully screwed on to the engine before every flight with a dozen screws.

The balsa-wood body of the airplane holds several servos, a gyroscope, the fuel tank and batteries.

The complex remote control has multi-directional joysticks, kill switches and a tidy display.

Lights, camera and action: Neeraj, our director of photography, with the Arri Alexa film camera.

Behind the scenes: Our video team hard at work.

The walls of this church in Dhanushkodi still stand, 52 years after the rest of it was ravaged by a cyclone.