It is a truism to say that most automobile journalists surrender to the zeitgeist; they write articles in which either the features of the car under review are extolled or everything is dismissed as below expectations. Fortunately, I am neither an automobile journalist nor an auto junkie.

My interest in automobiles is limited to offering comments, like ‘wow’ if it is a Rolls-Royce or ‘ouch’ when I hurt my thumb in the door of the old Ambassador.

Not to put too fine a point on my ignorance of most things, including those related to cars and racing, I must say that I know nothing about driving a car on a well-prepared track with two long straights and four hairpin bends.

Therefore, it was no small surprise when I found myself in Nagoya, the temple of Japanese manufacturer Toyota a few weeks ago, to compete in a car race along with 25 other journalists, most of them from the auto-journo fraternity.

Best fuel economy

The aim of the race was not to set a new world record in speed or acceleration but to obtain the best fuel economy on Prius hybrid cars. And so the race, titled “Eco-Run Challenge”, was held on a race-track at the Spa Nishiura Motor Park, in Aichi, set in the scenic backdrop of Mikawa Bay. The race itself comprised two sessions of a three-lap run around the 1.52 km track, while maintaining an average speed of 50 km per hour with good fuel efficiency.

The team notching up the best fuel efficiency would be the champ. And, mind you, there were penalty points for driving slow!

It was scary to see the demo driver swerve into and out of curves without reducing speed, like in Hollywood movies.

I steeled my nerves and got into the Prius with my team mate. As I held the steering wheel, all we could manage — even while being overwhelmed by the glitzy multi-display dashboard — was to look alternately at the fuel efficiency meter and the odometer.

The winning pair achieved an impressive 29 km per litre. The contest was not without its irony since our team also got a prize, which was rather like Alice in Wonderland when the “Dodo said, all have won and all must have prizes”. It was called the “Fighting Spirit Award” for bringing up the rear in the fuel efficiency league table.

The PHV Slalom Test

Having fortified our fighting spirit, so to speak, we went on to test drive the Prius plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHVs).

I wondered how different the Prius PHV could be from the regular Prius hybrid, at least in the dynamics of driving, since the battery size and weight (3 times more) are enormous compared to the hybrid.

The track offered a brief slalom test with two tight U-turns to prove that the size of the battery had no effect on road behaviour.

Multi-car Track Driving

Next on the event card was experiential driving on different hybrid vehicles such as Toyota Sai (same as Lexus HS250h), Toyota Camry, Toyota Crown Comfort, Lexus GS450h, Toyota Estima and Toyota Alphard. This event had the most profound impact on me; as someone who was an environmental scientist, I look forward to the days when hybrids in India combat air pollution in our cities.

Public road driving

With the whole morning’s experience of driving hybrids under my belt, I went on to drive with unprecedented confidence when I took the Toyota Camry on the narrow rural roads of Japan. That was a cake-walk — no cows, no potholes and only a few pedestrians.

My takeaway? Never mind the technical mumbo-jumbo and what the auto-journos had to say. I was most impressed by the quietness and the looks of the cars. I could hardly tell if the engine was running and hey, these were really sexy machines.

(The writer was in Nagoya at the invitation of Toyota Motor Corporation)

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