Spent a few minutes checking out the Harrier yesterday. Boy oh boy, the car is a real looker ! Couldn't test drive (TD) the vehicle due to unavailability of TD vehicle. No prizes for guessing, the display car was the top variant and orange in color.
Let me clear this first, Harrier is not as well put together or as solidly built as a Jeep Compass or a typical car from the west. Nonetheless TATA have made great strides in design, build and the overall interior quality. They are inching close to Hyundai, though not quite up there.
Harrier looks butch and intimidating from every angle. Road presence wise it feels more XUV'ish than a Compass. Competing C-SUV's may look puny.
The engine bay is neatly laid out. Hood is HEAVY and to make matters worse, there are no gas struts to help. Don't miss the noise insulation materials and the frameless wipers.
As expected the both the wheel arches are fully cladded. No disc brakes at rear.
Rear is stylish, but is a little bulky. The led wrap around tail lamp with black accents looks smart.
I wish the headlamp cluster used black and silver accents so as to break the chrome monotony. Not much detailing inside the headlamp unit.
A closer look at the rear camera module
No two ways about it, the dashboard looks smart. Very tasteful black and brown combination. The top portion of the dashboard is soft touch.
Steering is just the right size, with comfortable thumb contours. The concave hornpad looks and feels like it's from a segment or two lower. The lights and wiper stalks doesn't belong to a 15 lac rupee car. The speedometer console, when lit up, shows the tachometer, fuel and temperature gauge and others.
They could have integrated a bigger screen here by eliminating those physical buttons. Didn't test the unit in detail; touch response is good and screen resolution is okay, but this unit cannot be compared to the silky smooth high resolution Sync unit offered in the Ecosport. I'm not an audiophile and found the sound system to be excellent. There's a sub-woofer inside the boot.
The AC vent slider moves in a nice and damped way.
The aircraft inspired handbrakes looks good, but is not in a very ergonomic to use. The handle has a very noticeable sideward play too.
Up above are the sweet looking gear lever, the 2WD control modes and a small slot to park your smartphone and other things.
The drive mode selector, ESP & Hill decent control toggle.
The front and rear doors are large and provides good amount of storage space. Doors are not heavy and don't close with a solid thud. Couple of points that I noticed (and could possibly be attributed to the quality control) were:
1. Rear door vibrates noticeably when I shut the front doors
2. Front passenger door had noticeable vertical play
Don't miss the additional dedicated compartment in the rear door SmartPhone, and the Tweeters.
Armrest looks nice, but is flawed in a couple of areas. One, it doesn't slide, and is practically doesn't serve the purpose well. Secondly, to access the storage cubicle beneath it, one has to press (push in) in the button on the armrest towards back- not at all convenient. The cubicle provides cooling functionality and houses the 12v charging socket. You get a space to park your smartphone at the rear of the armrest.
The glove-box is HUGE and provides a partition inside. No dedicated slot to keep the car manual and other documents.
No vanity mirror lights for co-driver and no ticket holders for the driver is a big bummer.
The cabin light toggle switch belongs to the 90's.
The driver seat is not power adjustable. Worse, the seat height adjustment lever had a lot of horizontal play, and wouldn't look out of place in a humble wagon-R. Look at the exposed screws on the front seat mounts- very crude.
A look at the front and rear legroom for a 5'10' person (front seats are set at maximum height and pushed all the way back). The legroom is sufficient, but not in abundance considering the size of the car.
To find the ideal driving position, I had to jack up the seat all the way up (for the right under-thigh support) and push the seat all the way back. That said, at the highest position the front seat back provides superb support; icing on the cake is a lumbar support adjustment lever and a near perfect cushioning.
Taller folks who care about the perfect driving position may have to lower the seats considerably.
The driver footwell is not very wide either, and there's only just enough space to rest your left leg.
The rear seats are set high and provides great under thigh support. The seat base and seat back are at the perfect angles. The super-soft headrests lets you sink your head in supreme comfort. No headrest for the middle passenger though. The seat is wide enough to accommodate 3 easily.
The transmission tunnel makes its presence felt.
Well shaped boot. The parcel tray however is a single piece unit (not like the very functional 2 fold unit found in Duster). Don't miss the sub-woofer on the left side. There's a storage space beneath the boot. A 3rd row seat would be a tight fit here.
Spare wheel sits under the chassis.