[redsox]

Hi,

I am new to this forum and have spent a couple of days on this forum and thoroughly enjoyed and gained a lot of insight.

To give you a little Background, I just relocated to India from the US and I am planning to purchase a car in India. I dont have any experience driving a Manual Car but want to purchase a Manual Transmission Car. I have not driven on Indian Roads as Well. Thats about a quick background,

I was really impressed by the Swift but was dissapointed to see the waiting time, 8 Months for Diesel in Bangalore and 2 months for Petrol. So I decided to look around and really like the Ford Fiesta.

The Santro Xing XO Limited Edition is also nice, I dont have to go for a loan and for a new Driver on Indian Roads, I thought this might be a good choice to get used to Driving and have low maintenance Costs. I am assuming I will have a few dents in the beginning and have some repairs associated with it.

I really like the Fiesta but the only negative point is its Cost of Maintenance,

You can say it is a battle between Heart (Ford Fiesta 1.4 ZXI) and the brain (Hyundai Santro Xing Limited Edition).

Can you members post your views and advise based on my background and other considerations ?


Thanks

[iraghava]

Since you've never driven a MT car before & more importantly haven't driven in Indian traffic conditions, I would suggest the Santro over the Fiesta primarily for the following reasons:

1. Santro being a smaller car than the Fiesta would be easier for you to manouver in congested Bangalore traffic & easier to park too.

2. Inevitable there will be a few dents & dings associated with our conditions which will be cheaper to repair on the Santro.

3. It's quite an easy car to drive & small too, so you'll get the hang on driving in our conditions quicker.

Waise, why not look at the Santro AT if you've never driven a manual before? Will make you acclimatisation to our condition a lot easier IMO.

[DCEite]

Yes i agree with IRaghava. Santro for first timer on Indian traffic conditions is the way to go. You can save some money though and instead of going for Limited edition, go for entry level AC+PS version (XK?).

[asitkde]

Santro XK does not have PS.
AC+PS version of Santro is the XL which has also in addition front power windows. The top of the line is XO which has all the features of XL plus rear power windows, body colored bumbers, rear defogger and rear wiper.

Santro is definitely a nice car to drive and it also has a version with automatic transmission. Assuming you have not driven in India before, it may not be a bad idea to start driving here with an auto transmission, because the traffic here is so much chaotic. Then once you are familiar with traffic here, you may go for a manual transmission car for your next purchase, that way may be you can handle one thing at a time! Just an idea.

[Eddy]

I think it makes more sense to go for a small car at this stage. So between the two, I would suggest Santro. Being a Ford owner myself, I know that the denting / painting will be slightly expensive.

Other than these two, why not try the spark or getz ?

[ravibhat]

It makes more sense to go for small car If you and your family fit perfect with it. I suggest Spark instead of Santro because since you are back from USA, you will be disapointed with Santro for its bad road handling. In bangalore few roads are very bad Santro makes your life bumby ride in bad roads.

Spark its new fresh car with good package makes more sense.

Test drive Santro and Spark and decide between them. If you need quality
cars among small ones its between Spark and Santro nothing come close to it.

If you want to go for Sedan it has to be honda city, nothing comes close with this sedan. You will love it. Even if you want to go back to USa within year you will get good resale value

Regards,

Ravi.

[narayan]

in case u are going for the small car ( which seems to be a logical choice given the fact that u are new to india and to manuals) why buy a new santro ? why dont u buy a used alto or a santro , use it for a year and then sell it off...

that way u may not lose much on resale value also compared to a new santro....

[redsox]

Thank you for all your responses. It makes my decision easier. I am not specifically going for the automatic because of two reasons

1) Low Fuel Efficiency

2) I want to get used to driving the Manual Transmission.

I had not thought about the Chevy Spark because I heard that It is just an Old Daewoo Matiz. I was not too sure about the Maintenance Costs of the Chevy as compared to the Hyundai.

Since Hyundai has been in the Indian market for longer time than the Chevrolet, I am guessing their Service Network is better and the Spare Parts are also cheaper.

Any Views.

Thanks

[gemithomas]

Originally Posted by iraghava

Since you've never driven a MT car before & more importantly haven't driven in Indian traffic conditions, I would suggest the Santro over the Fiesta primarily for the following reasons:

1. Santro being a smaller car than the Fiesta would be easier for you to manouver in congested Bangalore traffic & easier to park too.

2. Inevitable there will be a few dents & dings associated with our conditions which will be cheaper to repair on the Santro.

3. It's quite an easy car to drive & small too, so you'll get the hang on driving in our conditions quicker.

Waise, why not look at the Santro AT if you've never driven a manual before? Will make you acclimatisation to our condition a lot easier IMO.

DITTO for me too. Else just wondering if you want to consider a second hand car for around six months time and then move on to the fiesta?

[ownerofazkaban]

Hi redsox,

Many folks at my work who returned from US, have gone with Santro manual and pretty satisfied with it. Couple of them who brought the AT, are not happy with it due to fuel economy etc compared to manual version driven by similar folks.

Another point which might help is, even if they had Indian LD, they took the 21 hours driving classes on Santro (same car they wanted to buy) just before buying the car, which helped them a lot.

You your decision to go for Santro XO is good. It has all the luxuries you need and it will be a brand new car. Don't get too paranoid, it's not really that horrible when you get on the road. Keep on the AC, & you'll be cool.

Cheers,