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Dirty fuel

  • 14/11/2003

Dirty fuel When Faridabad resident Rajendra Dhankar's eight-month-old Santro began to belch white smoke like a run-down truck, he rushed to the vehicle's manufacturer, Hyundai. What had caused the engine to so wheeze was heavily adulterated fuel. The company replaced the piston and the ring. Dhankar's car was as good as new again. But even as he swore to henceforth buy petrol only from Delhi (Faridabad is a satellite town of Delhi), Hyundai hit the panic button.

Since the beginning of 2003, it had received 70-80 customer complaints from buyers of new vehicles in Faridabad. A pattern had begun to emerge: premature engine failure, before the warranty period expired. "We were shocked,' says V D Bhasin, vice president, Hyundai. "Complaints were largely with the technology we introduced recently

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