DC Avanti 2015 First Drive Review

DC Avanti 2015 First Drive Review

The DC Avanti will be launched soon and we get behind the wheel of India’s first home built mid-engined sports car to see how it really feels.

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The DC Avanti is a car that has been under development for a long time. In fact ZigWheels was the first publication in India to drive the car back in 2012 when it was a very basic prototype and had quite a few good things to say about it. Now though, it is very close to being launched and we finally get our hands on what seem to be very close to the car that will actually be available in India in the next few months. I personally have waited for a really long time to get behind the wheel of this car, mainly because of the fact that you can easily be surprised at the level of potential some small automobile manufacturers can bring to the table. Of course, this isn’t the first sports car to be indigenously built in India (that would be the San Storm which was available in the late 90s), but it is the first mid-engined sportscar that an Indian automobile manufacturer has built.

So first things first, the Avanti, which incidentally means ‘forward’ in Italian is very apt for this car. Why? Well, for starters, the Avanti’s bodywork is built completely out of carbonfibre just like a Lamborghini Aventador! And as much as we agree that the way it looks is more of an acquired taste, the Avanti is certainly a very striking car. The front for example is extremely aggressive with a large air dam with an inset mesh grille. The car that we drove had a set of simple headlamps with independent units for the actual headlamp, the parking light and the indicators which did look very unappealing. However, the production version of the car will have a single unit with a set of projectors and an LED daytime running light.

Continuing on the design however, the Avanti is a sheer showcase of design elements with a flowing shoulder line that splits right through the center and two large air scoops to cool the rear mounted engine. We also like the styling element on the hood and of course the louvered engine cover that reminds us of the likes of the poster-worthy supercars of the seventies and eighties. The rear design does look a little overdone and a little droopier than it should have been, but as a first time effort to build a car out of scratch, it is commendable.

That said, for the future, DC should remember to have a shorter tail that ends slightly abruptly, inspired from the likes of the Ferrari 250 GTO perhaps. Just like the headlamps, the tail lamps in the car that we drove are not the ones that will come in the production version, which incidentally will get LED festooned one piece lamps. We also like the fact that the Avanti gets a set of buttresses, which personally is a design feature that I adore. The wheels too are an improvement over the ones we saw at the Auto Expo in 2014 and are in a machined aluminum finish.