I don’t read book summaries. Neither should you. The following are mostly notes to myself for later reference, and are my interpretations.

After I published my books wishlist, Sanmit Dixit sent me Automotive alchemy in India that he had written. Thank you, Sanmit. This is a good book, very informative and something that I wish I had read 10 years ago.

Some background: I bought my first car, a Vento GT in 2015 (sold in 2017) followed by Audi A4 in 2016 (still have this with me and will keep with me for life). I have experienced fleecing, randomly added services cost, the irritating non-predictability, non-visibility of work progress at the workshop (official as well as non-official), randomly occurring problems with rat bites, tyre bursts to some electrical components and a hundred more. 

Sanmit talks about all these issues that I have faced at some point in my life with cars. I found the book extremely useful and already gifted it to a few folks around me as well. I think every car owner who cares about what they drive should read this book. It’s good to be aware from the get-go on what to avoid, be careful of in this supremely unorganised system of car ownership. I gave this book to one of the researchers in my team as well as an inspiration to document our services categories, products, user behaviours, and observations in due course of time.

Second, I also loved the fact that Sanmit is a heavy note-taker. I am too. In fact while reading this book, I messaged him telling how much I appreciate the fact that there’s someone who’s an avid observer and note-taker and put that thoughtfulness in compiling this book in 60 hours. Commendable.

Highly recommend this book. Buy it here. And, thanks Sanmit again to send me this book.

Unlike the usual book notes that I log, with this one it's different. Reading this was basically information that I've been through, or am going through in many ways. There's no way I trust OEM service centres for service, the pricing of multiple new things that get added every time I give for service, and bucket loads of inconvenience that I've faced over the decade.

I fall into the bucket of time poor and easy learner (as Sanmit in the book categorises). Trust & cost in almost all instances have been broken over the years so I usually do a fair bit of research before taking a decision. Simples ones being —

• I look up all things in the quotation shared during service and remove the unnecessary ones; ChatGPT & Perplexity along with TeamBHP comes handy.

• Just like most of gadgets, never went for PPF/ Ceramic coating etc. I trust the good quality of build quality and even if it goes through some wear and tear, I'm personally okay with it.

• I don't go ahead with what the OEM workshop or 3rd party workshop recommends me. I rely on some research when I am patient about the issues to be fixed. I default to OEM in case of critical stuff; no risks. Recently, while the car was parked on the road.. a bike and autorickshaw crashed head-on and eventually slammed into the front-right side of my car. We had to pull the autorickshaw out of the car. Steering-rack unit got damaged. It's in the workshop now to replace the entire rig. Will take weeks.

• My relationship manager is kind enough to send me regular photos and updates on everything. Have known him for years, so some level of trust is there… but not blind trust.

Reading this book was a reminder on how to stay proactive on doing your own research before any car-related decision making.

A list I'm keeping handy for later.

• Used cars: Cars24, CarTrade, Droom, Spinny

• Parking assistance: Park+, Parkmate

• Self-driving: Zoomcar, Carzonrent, Revv

• Car-information: CarInfo, CarWho

• Leasing firms: Pumpumpum

• Mobility: Ola, Yulu

• Spare parts: Boodmo

• Pre-delivery inspection: Zekardo

• Fleet management: Loconav

• On-demand drivers: DriveU

• Insurance providers: Acko, InsuranceDekho

• RSA: ReadyAssist

• Automotive influencers/creators: Autocar, HorsepowerCartel, Faisal Khan, MOtorOctane, Motorbeam, Powerdrift, NanasteCar, Ask CarGuru, MyCarHelpline

• Tech-enabled car maintenance: GoMechanic, Carpathy, Carmozo, Gobumpr, Pitstop, Carnation

This is one thing I wish was covered in the book — all the learnings summarised in the form of a checklists and dos/don'ts at the end of the book or respective chapters.