Mercs SUCK!!!

Greetings to one and all. I'd hoped my first post in this new blog would be more hilarious than this one promises to be. My apologies for that. But you know, I don't write these posts. They write themselves. I'm just the channel. Enjoy!

Yesterday, 16-APR-2010, I rode to Bombay in an MSRTC Shivneri Mercedes-Benz bus. It didn't live up to my expectations. The ride was too harsh, not rough but harsh. By that I mean that every time the bus swayed, it tossed me around. Terrible!

No wait, I take back the part about the ride not being rough. It's like an auto rickshaw! The air suspension is barely as good as a BEST bus. The dampers are a joke...Oh the oscillations! For a 3 year old, you wouldn't need to take him on a roller coaster ride for him to show you what he's been eating, if you get my meaning. The Merc will do the trick.

The second big problem I had was with the size of the bus. The aisle was so narrow, I with my pockets bulging with my cell phone and wallet, kept hitting seats on both sides of the aisle, not to mention the bags I carried in my hands. One might think at this point that Mercedes-Benz have sacrificed aisle size to accommodate wider seats while maintaining the overall width of the vehicle. They haven't. What appears to have happened is that they've made the bus narrower which, in my opinion, has made it more unstable and increased the body roll.

Then there's a third problem and this might not seem like a big deal, but I assure you, it's very annoying. The seat reclining lever touches the seat cushion and sticks out so that when you sit down, it pokes your hamstrings. And that really hurts if you're a heavy person.

But don't go away just yet. The Merc doesn't disappoint... if you want to be disappointed, that is. The air conditioning vents aren't very user friendly. They just open and shut. You can't 'direct' the flow of air. Well, not effectively anyway.

And finally, the cherry on the sundae is this: The last two rows at the back of the bus get really incredibly HOT! The engine is right behind/under you and the good folk at Merc seem not to give too much importance to heat insulation between the passenger cabin and the engine bay.

The only silver lining is that most of MSRTC's fleet consists of the Volvo B7R's and 9400's and JCBL/King Long Cerita buses. They are far better than the Merc buses in absolutely every way. And I'm not exaggerating about this. The air conditioning is better, the ride is smoother, the seats are more comfortable, the recliner lever is flush with the side of the seat so that you can push it down like a button and it doesn't make unsuspecting passengers cry out in pain!

That concludes my first post in this new blog. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you never have the misfortune of having to ride in one of those awful Mercedes-Benz buses.

Live long and prosper!!