Indian car buyers might be purchasing fewer cars but they are all increasingly automatics. Now Datsun is bringing in an affordable CVT on its Go and Go+

In a country as large and diverse as India, with hundreds of languages, dialects and cultures, it is often difficult to find a common unifying thread. Some could argue that it is cricket, others could make the case for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the first political leader in decades who attracts strong opinions one way or the other across India. However, I believe that there is one thing that unites Indians — our style of driving. In the past 12 months, I have driven in several States and cities across the country and other than some notable exceptions, one actually in the Union Territory, Chandigarh, I can state that they now have an Indian style of driving. I’m afraid it is godawful and that’s why, I wholeheartedly support the new Motor Vehicles Act. While I do believe that some nuances can be made to the act but the new stricter punishments and fines are something we really need to stop the seeming continuation of the civil disobedience movement on our roads. With the conservative estimate of a million deaths over the past decade, Indian roads have been — I do not use this term lightly — genocidal.

Now on to the cars in question — the updated Datsun Go and Go+, which now come with a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) automatic. Another thing that has united Indians over the past few years has been the sudden transformation of the Indian car market towards automatics and while we all know the weakness in the car market right now, when you delve into the sales figures, you will see that almost a third of all new car sales, in some models over half of new car sales are equipped with automatic transmissions. A car launched without that, particularly in a pricier segment, is almost guaranteed to see a tepid response.

The automatic option that popularised the concept in India was the ‘Automated Manual Transmission’ (AMT), which you can find on several Maruti, Mahindra, Tata Motors and Hyundai cars. The AMT is basically a regular manual transmission, which has a hydraulic or electronic activated actuator, which you can think of as a robotic leg that engages the clutch and shifts gears. And while gradual improvements have made AMTs better over the years, they’re not what one would call state-of-the-art. Gear changes are languid and even in better AMT cars, one would feel what is described as “shift shock.” It is the sudden jerk that occurs when you either upshift or downshift the gear. But AMTs are cheap, which is why, despite selling more advanced gearboxes in international markets, both Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai have stuck to them in India.

This brings us to the CVT, which is essentially a transmission that on the face of it is the perfect gearbox, which instead of toothed gears uses a belt to connect the engine output shaft and the driveshaft, whereas, in an ideal world, delivers the right amount of power through the right ratio and is a vehicle with unlimited gears. CVTs are very common in automatic scooters and Japanese manufacturers, in particular, have taken to CVTs in a big way. So you see them across all Honda and Toyota vehicles and even on the occasional Maruti Suzuki (like Baleno) and now Datsun. The entry-level brand brought to the country by Nissan has brought in a CVT as well. What’s interesting is that Datsun has brought the CVT on a small hatchback in the Go and Go+. These are the cars that go up against the Maruti Suzuki Alto K10 and Celerio as well as the Hyundai Santro, all cars that have AMTs. It’s interesting because the CVT is, by virtue of its more complicated engineering, more expensive than AMT. This is a brave decision in such a cost-conscious market, although we are yet to see how the cars will be priced.

So how are the Go and Go+ CVTs to drive? Well, not bad, power delivery is far more consistent than any AMT rival, and the “kick-down”, that is when you floor the accelerator and the gearbox has to switch gears, is fast. Now, the Go and Go+ have Nissan-Renault’s one-litre engine, which isn’t the most powerful unit in the market, albeit it is at par for the course in its segment, but this is not a car, which could be very comfortable at high speeds. And while CVTs are clearly superior in urban-driving conditions, due to the fact that they don’t have “gears”, they are not what one would call enthusiastic cars to drive. Some manufacturers get around this by adding a torque-converter to the CVT (Honda), but that makes CVTs more expensive. As a result, if you floor the accelerator to try and achieve highway speed limits, with or without pressing the “sport” button on the gearbox, you will see the engine tachometer almost hit the maximum limit. You’d start wondering why. Long story short, the Go and Go+ (CVT) are great vehicles to be driven in urban conditions and by more sedate drivers.

The problem for the Go and Go+ CVT is that despite improvements to the fit and finish improvements to both cars during the last facelift, a few months ago, the plastic quality still feels poor and worse still, not sturdy enough. Sure the car now has Apple CarPlay and Android Auto through a fairly snappy touchscreen, but the lack of steering controls does restrict usage on smartphone interfaces, buttons to accept calls or activate the artificial intelligence assistance through Google or Siri have to be there. And while the Hyundai Santro AMT will still possibly end up being more expensive than either of these cars, it feels far better and even if it may not be as good to drive, it is nicer to sit in. And at the end of the day, when you are stuck on a 3 km-long traffic jam on the Mathura Road, I’d rather be in the car that feels nicer inside.

Before I conclude, I would like to use this opportunity to announce that I will be joining the Indian Car Of The Year (ICOTY) jury this year. The ICOTY is India’s most important car award and is given to the most important and influential vehicle to have been launched in the past year. The jury consists of over 20 of India’s most influential and important automotive writers and reviewers and is currently headed up by Yogendra Pratap, the editor of Auto Today magazine. The 2018 ICOTY was the Suzuki Swift and the 2019 one will be announced in mid-December 2019.

(Got a question on cars? Ping Kushan on Twitter at @kushanmitra.)