Don’t you just love going for purposeless
drives every once in a while? I do too. And that’s exactly what I did a few
days ago. My wife had been complaining (‘suggesting,’ in case she reads this)
about not getting a weekend break this year. So I thought it was high time I
changed that. I had it all planned out – a surprise out-of-town getaway, as I
only told my wife and kids (not that my year-old son understands much anyway)
that we were heading to the mall for lunch and a bit of shopping. So, my
cunning plan was at play. I’d get brownie points for being a caring husband and
a doting father – or at least so I thought.
The
Hyundai Grand i10 offers decent looks, combined with reasonable specification
I should say that the Grand i10 is quite a
loved car in the family. My daughter adores the way it looks, and my wife likes
the fact that it comes loaded with all the comfort features that one could ask
for in a spacious hatchback. As for my son, well, he couldn’t be bothered – he
hasn’t reached an age where he should be either. His only intention is to
sample and destruct whatever he can. I think he’s going to grow up to be quite
like me!
Steering
mounted controls for music and phone. Also spot the engine start/stop button
The long and short of it is this – the
little getaway went exactly as planned, and was highly appreciated by the whole
family. The i10 proved to be the perfect companion through the journey, and won
much appreciation from the family. Well, almost! You see, on the return
journey, I was sitting in traffic with my foot on the clutch pedal. When I
tried putting the car in gear to crawl forward, the gear lever was hesitant to
slot into first. Not wanting to force it, I released the clutch and tried again
– but the pedal had gone strangely soft and I now found myself holding up
traffic unable to get the car in gear. I tried once more, and, with a little
more effort, managed to slot it into gear and pull to the side of the road.
The
1.2 litre Kappa engine is refined, silent and powerful
A couple of quick calls later, I found
myself speaking with a Hyundai service advisor, who suggested that it was
possible that the hydraulic clutch system had taken some air that needed to be
pumped out. He asked me to pull the pedal all the way up with my foot, and then
pump it a couple of times to get the air out. The whole thing seemed strange
because the Grand has been bullet proof for the past several months that I’ve
been driving it.
The
sleek repeater lamps in the rear
