The Indian car market’s relationship with performance cars is scratchy at best. The heavily taxed imports make it very expensive to own fast cars for the common people and there are barely any affordable options. Further, the entire culture around cars in the country is not conducive to fast cars being popular. The patchy quality of the road network, congestion and extremely high number of fatalities are also factors which limit the market for such cars. Ferrari 488 GTB Credits: Top Gear However, there have been some positive signs lately. The most prominent of which have been car launches in the ‘warm’ hatch segments. Cars like the VW Polo GT TSI, The Abarth Punto and the Maruti Suzuki Baleno RS show a shift in the perception of buyers. There is still obviously a long way to go. These cars would figure nowhere in the list of fast cars abroad. However, they seem to be buckling the age old Indian tradition of cars being drab tools and vehicles to depict social stature. The h