Tata Bolt Hatchback climbs stairs, but should you do it?

We have seen SUVs climb stairs numerous times and we have covered some of them on our website also. We have covered Mahindra Thar, Toyota Fortuner, Force Gurkha climbing the stairs. Here, we have an unusual video where we can see a hatchback by Tata Motors climbing stairs. The video is uploaded by Somnath Chikane on his YouTube channel. The video is quite old as it was uploaded on YouTube on April 25th 2015. It has almost 25,000 views.

In the video, we see a red coloured Tata Bolt going upstairs. It looks like a brand-new Bolt in showroom condition. It does not even have a number plate. At first, the Bolt does stutter a bit but then the driver increases the throttle and the hatchback climbed the stairs without any hesitation. The tyres were spinning because there was not enough traction when compared to tarmac roads but once the momentum was created, there was no stopping the Tata Bolt.

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Tata Bolt was a humble hatchback that used to compete against rivals like Maruti Suzuki WagonR, Hyundai Santro, Maruti Suzuki Celerio, Renault Kwid and Hyundai Grand i10. Bolt was an evolution of the incredibly successful Tata Indica.

Bolt was offered with a petrol engine as well as a diesel engine. The petrol engine was a 1.2-litre unit that was turbocharged whereas the diesel engine was a 1.3-litre unit that was sourced from Fiat. Both the engines were shared with the Zest compact sedan, the predecessor of Tigor. Tata made changes to gearing, they made it shorter for spirited driving.

The turbo petrol engine produced 90 PS of max power and a class-leading torque figure of 140 Nm. The diesel engine produced 75 PS of max power and 190 Nm of peak torque. Both the engines were offered with a 5-speed manual gearbox.

But, should you do it?

You should not climb upstairs in a vehicle. Especially, if it is a front-wheel-drive car that is meant to be used as a family car. Such vehicles are meant for daily use, for office and daily commutes. They are tuned for comfort over tackling off-road or for tough usage. The suspension setup of such vehicles cannot handle such kind of abuse. You can see in the video that the suspension is continuously jumping, which just be putting a lot of strain on the shock absorbers. Usually, manufacturers use leaf springs for vehicles that are meant for off-roading. This is because the leaf springs can take a rough beating.

Another thing to note is the ground clearance. Bolt’s ground clearance is enough for clearing the speed breakers that the hatchback will face while travelling through the city. If you will closely watch the video, you would see that the Bolt’s bumper was very close to hitting the first stair. That could have done some serious damage to the bumper. Then there are the components like a radiator that sits right behind the bumper. If such components get damaged then the repair cost could be very high.

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