With the plethora of cars and bikes in our garage the SX4 has had an unusually calm month with just a brace of Pune-Mumbai runs to show for work. And on one of them I was pulled over by the cops for the temporary number plate. Despite having the paper work all in order a little palm greasing had to be done - turns out temporary number plates in Maharashtra have to be red while up North temp plates are in regular black on white. Can't we have a set of common regulations in this country?

The more you drive the SX4, the more you get used to the little creature comforts which, when you shift into another car, are glaring in their omission. Take the steering wheel mounted controls for the stereo - it's such a brilliant ergonomic feature that other cars instantly irritate me owing to the lack of the same. And there's a huge safety benefit as you no longer have to take your eyes off the road or your hands off the wheel to operate the stereo.

Another thing I love about the SX4 is her commanding seating position that benefits all round visibility by a huge margin and makes squeezing her in traffic a breeze. And then there's the inherent sportiness of the car that makes her a blast to drive - at the expense of ride quality though.

Of late we've been seeing numerous on the road and most of them seem to be top-end ZXi variants replete with alloy wheels twin airbags and ABS. Either buyers are walking up to the fact that all these safety feature will save your life in case of a prang or the fantastic value-for-money equation that the represents is just too good to resist.