Fiat Launches Small Car Grande Punto | Priced at Rs.3.99 to 6.11 Lakhs | Fiat Grand Punto Photos, Pictures, Images

Grande Punto - the much awaited premium hatchback from Italian motor giant Fiat launched in India on Wednesday, 17th June, 2009. World bestseller Fiat Grande Punto launched with three engine options, 1.4-litre FIRE Petrol, 1.2-litre petrol and the 1.3-litre MultiJet diesel engines.




Grande Punto will be available with four variants Active, Dynamic, Emotion and fully-loaded Emotion PK with a very competetive price ranging from Rs. 3.99 Lakhs to 6.11 Lakhs. Fiat Grande Punto will give very tough competition to Skoda Fabia, Maruti Swift, Hyundai i20 and recently launched Honda Jazz.

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1975 Kenny Roberts in Indianapolis, Indiana.

By our guest editor, Eric Johnson

Motorcycle racing is full of myth, folklore and larger than life
legends. However, in the eyes of plenty, one of the greatest stories
ever told took place in the summer of 1975 on a mile-long dirt oval in
Indianapolis, Indiana.

That year, Kenny Roberts was dong his best to beat back a number of
beastly Harley-Davidsons that were trying to steal away his Grand
National number one plate. Far more powerful, the Harley XRs were
omnipotent and all seemed lost. Or was it? Before the race scheduled
for the Indy Fairgrounds, Roberts and his mechanic took a huge gamble
and shoehorned an engine far too powerful and potent for the bike into
the spindly frame of his Champion Yamaha 750. When his mechanic asked
him how fast he needed to go to win, Roberts replied, "About one
thirty should be enough.”

The 25-mile main event all came down to the final white flag lap.
Having come from far behind, Roberts astride an evil-handling, ill-
tempered motorcycle had taken huge chances and rode with extraordinary
courage to reel in the two leading Harley-Davidsons of teammates Jay
Springsteen and Korky Keener. With just three turns to go, Roberts
rode the rim, pinned the throttle to the stops and was actually
skimming the concrete retaining wall and skipping off hay bales.



"I still remember seeing hay scattering in the air as Kenny came out
of turn four,” reflected Robert’s’ mechanic of that night.

Roberts refused to lose and at the finish line, won the race by two
feet. When he caught his breath and his hands stopped shaking, he
uttered the words, "They don't pay me enough to ride that thing.”

By the way, he was wearing a pair of Alpinestars boots.

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1975 Harley RR250-R

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If the Grand Prix road-racing record books came with footnotes, you’d see a reference to this Italian-built motorcycle next to the only GP titles ever credited to Harley-Davidson.



Yes, you read that right. Back in the 1970s, Harley-Davidson actually was a force in international road racing, winning the 250cc class three years in a row and topping the 350cc class once.



How did a company known for big, slow-revving, four-stroke V-twins rack up such an impressive streak in a form of competition dominated by small, hard-running two-strokes?



In a word, Aermacchi.

When small, technically sophisticated machines from Japan began flowing into the United States in the 1960s, Harley responded by buying a 50 percent stake in the Italian motorcycle firm Aermacchi, spun off just a few years earlier from airplane-maker Aeronatica Macchia. Aermacchi’s trademark 250cc four-stroke singles, with one horizontal cylinder sticking straight forward, formed the basis of the Harley Sprint line of 250s and 350s.



Aermacchi officials, who in the Italian tradition believed that race performance was integral to success, continued to contest the Grands Prix using two-strokes under their own company name. Then, in 1973, the same machines were rebadged as Harley-Davidsons. A year later, factory rider Walter Villa began a string of three 250cc championships. In that final championship year, 1976, Villa also topped the 350cc class on a bored-out version of the same bike.



Early air-cooled versions made about 50 horsepower at 10,000 rpm. Later water-cooled bikes like this one pumped out 58 horsepower at 12,000 rpm.



It’s hard to say that all this grand-prix success had any positive impact on the parent company, which was staggering through its years of ownership by the AMF conglomerate. Still, the GP race program continued through 1978. A few years later, the Aermacchi plant in northern Italy was sold to the new Cagiva brand, which continues to build motorcycles there today.



As a race machine, the RR250 was built in extremely limited numbers, which makes any surviving examples, like this 1975 model, owned by Benjy Steele of Huntington, West Virginia, pretty hard to find. But this particular RR250, now on display in the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum at AMA headquarters in Pickerington, Ohio, is even rarer: It’s never been started since it left the factory

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