Well, I am back from the test drive and i think i have a good understanding of what I want (there may be something for you too @
srikanthns).
First up, Bimal Motors (Maruti), Old Airport Road. I took a friend of mine along, strictly as impartial judge (he owns a City, used to own WagonR earlier).
Note: my friend is 6'2" and I am 6'
So we reach 15 min. late from our agreed time of 12PM. The guy says wait up, the car is on it's way. We lounged around for for another 15-20 mins before the car came. And I would be remiss if i didn't say i was more than disappointed with the car that came. My first question was - Is that a customer's car you ave got for a TD? He said no sir, it's demo car - with 35K on the odo!!! With the tacky and broken down interior's i thought he might be right and i had no way of knowing. So we went along. My friend took the seat first and as soon as we were on the road, this guy gets the call from his colleague who is screaming at him and asking where he is, guess she has some other appointment. The guy says, we should take a U-turn at next crossing barely 2 mins into the car and I couldn't control my anger at him. He says, sir, this is the normal TD length and why do we want a longer one. We told him categorically that we had fixed an appointment and we will not let his/his colleague's/ his dealership's inanity come in the way. And we proceeded with the TD the way we wanted it
. We took our time and switched the driving position after sometime.
In all, here is the feedback on the car
- Good airy feel in the front seats
- Gear transmission smooth
- 2nd gear performance not good, we felt lot of lag
- AC is good, very functional
- Suspension - not so great, did not take to humps very well
- Noise was filtering in a lot (don't know what to put it down to)
- Back seats stiff, not very comfy
- Handling was good
Overall experience with car was good, not the dealership. But that's par for the course in India. Also, the thread about Maruti dealer's cartel seems bang on, the dealership person admitted as much when we were discussing financials. He said all dealerships have decided on no discounts etc and any infraction would be punished by Maruti with a 5L fine
Then we proceeded to KHT Motors (TATA), Whitefield. I could not book a TD in time and we just walked in. And as it would turn out, they had sent the car for an event and no other TD car was available. We said can we go to the event which was near TIN factory and they said they'll check. So we waited and eneded up taking TD of 2012 Nano!! About Nano later; the person said we could not go to the event. So we called up Concorde and they said the TD could be arranged. So we took a trip half way across the city and reached Dairy circle.
The experience was good to start with, the car was ready and the exact variant we wanted. We told the person upfront that we wanted a long TD - he said no problem, take it anywhere you want; Wow! We took it to the E City toll road (had to pay Rs 55, but it was worth it). So we tested the car for everything - stability, speed, braking, suspension, acceleration, everything. Here are some of the observations . He was up first again, on the driver''s seat. Car had 3k on the Odo.
- His first comment - these seats are very comfortable
- then we touched the plastics; on the dash, it was soft, elsewhere -smooth, not the rough we both expected... his 2nd comment, this is not TATA quality, how is it good?
- We then started looking for panel gaps as i never understood what those were and he has been driving for quite sometime now, we could not locate any obvious ones
- Then we started the TD, acceleration was good, no lag in 2nd gear but heavy in 3rd
- by this time AC had kicked in well and the car kept in hot sun cooled pretty fast
- Gear transmission was not as smooth as Ritz
- Other mechanical stuff a little on the harder side to use (indicator etc)
- horn was a little hard to operate
- other steering mounted controls pretty functional, no problem with working, i paired my phone with Bluetooth, we called a common friend, played songs from my phone - all good, no problems.
- We tried other switches, power windows, door knobs - all in working condition
- No filtering in of noise, silent on that front (compared to Ritz, which i know was well abused)
- We took it up to 140Ks; it felt very planted, good mannered. Brakes confidence inspiring. In city condition, could not test for body roll though
- it took the potholes, undulating roads very well. Mt friend said, better than his City
We came back after almost a 30 mins TD and were pretty satisfied. Pound to pound, we felt, Vista is a much better car. The only thing i may have to live with, is the gear transmission. Apart from that, i felt everything was fine and stays that way. Both of us were in agreement over our choice of Vista (he was a person who had a negative experience with TATA's to erase - on the product front, not service).
So guys, this is the story so far. Please help me in choosing the right dealer and right package - AMC, Insurance, other offers, etc. What accessories should i go for (given my limited budget), which sun film, under body coating and so on.