Having ridden my fair share in old Transporters, I grabbed hold of the door handle and pulled, putting my body weight behind it to get the door going - and the door came flying along the rail, slamming shut with the sound of the lid being put on a shoe box, more or less.

It was, ahem, of a considerably more material efficient construction than the sliding doors on a Transporter.

When I rode in one, I wasn't expecting much - since the car I was used to was a Maruti 800.

But the Omni was terrifying, like one notch above an auto-rickshaw.

Tata and Mahindra's cars are increasingly top-of the pack when it comes to safety; very likely that if this continues, the Japanese car makers will enjoy the same fate as the Japanese bike makers.