It’s been such an amazing month that I've lost track of the number of cars I've driven. The Volvo XC90, S80, BMW 525d, A6 3.0TDi, Mercedes E280 CDI, Skyline R34 ... not to forget smaller cars and other long-termers. And yet it's been an absolute pleasure to drive the Optra Magnum back home every night.

Just like the 3 diesel luxury cars we compared, the Magnum has a bad habit of unwittingly surprising the guy in front of you. My regular drive to and from office has nice stretches of highway and morons on those stretches who hog the right lane pootling along at 40 kph (read call-centre Sumos and Indicas). The Optra appears behind them with such ferocity, they never know what, er.... hit them and it's making my drives very interesting off-late.

There's no actual hits, involved of course, but the Optra has collected a bunch of dings. We got it with a deep gash in the left fender to start with, and then a mystery dent appeared on the top portion of the right rear door. The culprit, we've surmised, was a coconut that jumped to a conclusion.

But the biggest problem has been the battery. It was getting a bit weak, until one day, after three days of driving other things, I found that the car refused to crank. It was eventually towed to the nice guys at Bharati GM who did a fantastic job of bringing the car back to shape, repainting the fouled panels and completing the 10,000 km service as well, all in good time. Now I am back to passing those moronic Sumos.

Despite the overtaking and singing engine notes, it has been returning a healthy 11 kph in traffic, and we're expecting that figure to rise further. We also hear that Pete's has a Magnum box ready to roll. We're talking 150bhp and 35 kgm baby. RS beating numbers. Pete? Hello?

Oh no! I am sorry to report, that the battery has died for a second time, and as I write this, I am back to driving more mundane machinery. More on the Optra front in the next issue.