 Fifty-seven
bhp may not sound like much but when plonked into the feather light
Esteem, the results are pretty impressive. On the acceleration runs,
60kmph came up in 7.02 seconds while she went on to hit 100kmph in 18.81
seconds. Impressive figures by any yardstick and more so from a diesel
car's perspective. The engine also has sufficient reserve power and
never felt bogged down with the air-con running.
The power delivery is very much like in the Zen D, all peaky with not
much by way of a bottom end. Max power is developed at max revs and
so you really have to redline the car in all the gears to extract performance
from the engine. Not a bad thing that mind, for the excellent gearbox
makes gearshifting a real joy. But then unless you are an enthusiastic
driver, all this redlining and gearshifting (and accompanying noise)
could leave you with frayed nerves in time.
The lack of bottom end torque is reflected in the benchmark flexibility
tests, the 40-100kmph roll-on taking 29.19 seconds in fourth, going
up to a yawning 41.41 seconds in fifth gear. This makes highway cruising
not a very relaxed affair, requiring one to go down a gear or two to
overtake slower moving traffic. The top speed we managed was 142.1kmph,
the speedo indicating 150kmph at this mark.
In perspective, these performance figures are very respectable, especially
when compared to the only other cars in this segment, the Accent D (powered
by the same engine) and the Ikon 1.8D. The Accent doesn't even come
into the picture as far as performance is concerned while even the larger
engined Ikon does 0-100kmph in 24.8 seconds, a full 7.3 seconds off
the Esteem's pace.
Braking performance though was not all that hot and the car tended to
veer alarmingly to the left under heavy braking. The additional weight
of the engine tended to lock up the wheels under braking, the left front
wheel in particular locking up very easily and along with the meagre
rubber footprint she struggled to return respectable braking figures.
She came to a stop from 80kmph in 34.5 meters taking 3.2 seconds in
the process.
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