I bid good bye to my erstwhile Linea at 9:12 am on 2 Feb 2014. Linea took us to 23 states/UT in India + Bhutan. She did not breakdown anywhere, anytime during my ownership of 71,678 km in 4 years and 4 months. Linea was a nice car that had some exclusive useful features, which my present XUV 500 - costing almost the double the price of Linea - does not have.

Here are some pics showing my last drive from the portico to the street before handing over her to my friend, who is the current owner.





I have kept Linea's ashtray in my XUV500 as a souvenir with the full consent of my friend.



More details are here.

[Shome]

So finally I sold my Black Swift ZDi after a very memorable 3 year ownership. Had traveled all the way from Mumbai to Gujarat for a new year at the Rann of Kutchh in 2013, a 10 hour zombie drive to Udaipur in May 2013, a trip to picturesque Tarkarli, to and fro from Bangalore in a day and a weekend at Goa...my trusted steed never let me down.

I leave you with a heavy heart and will miss you my Black beauty!!!

[psn]

A few days ago, I finally made the change. Not because I needed to, just because I wanted to. I changed my beloved Honda City with another car. That another car, I shall discuss in another thread. I am writing to share with you my tribute to the car, as a way to say my good bye to her.

Honda City. My first car. A car which was owned by me that is. Before that, it was always my dads cars.

The City and I shared a lovely bond. She was my friend, who was dependable, caring, comfortable to be with and a lot of fun. We met in 2009 and in these 6 years and 80000 kms later, I don’t have a single story to share wherein, I was stranded in the middle of the road because of her. I don’t have a story to share wherein I had to spend a lot of money to take care of her. I, on the other hand, was at times reckless and careless with her. I was so, cause she allowed me to. The 1.6 liter ivtec engine, loved to be revved to its limit. I would be cruising at 70-80 kmph at 2000 rpm but when I wanted to have fun, I would down shift a few gears and suddenly the engine would roar to life, making its presence felt and propelling me forward, making the scenery outside a blur and bringing a wide grin to my face. The gears had short and precise throws, the clutch was light, the steering felt lovely to hold and the seats were extremely comfortable. A dream come true for a person who loves to drive.

The music system was very good and came with 4 speakers, but later I got OEM tweeters added to it. And from the sound being very good, the addition took the sound to a whole new level. Last year I added ambient light to it, again an OEM, which further made being inside the car a beautiful experience. After 45000 kms, I got the tires changed, from 175 section to 195 sections, which improved the handling a lot, and from being a twitchy teenager, it became a mature, grown up who was sure footed and confident in most situations.

A few highlights of my ownership of the car:
1, After the purchase of the car, the then vice-president of marketing from Honda had come to visit me and we spent a long time exchanging ideas on how to improve the product. And after that meeting, they launched the improved version of ANHC, the VMT version, which brighter shade of cream to the interiors, softer seats and tweeters. Meeting him was an honor and a privilege. Such a thing has never happened to me, and doubt it will happen again.
My son was brought home for the first time from the hospital to home in the CIty. And I am glad to share with you, his first words were Honda. Even today, for him, daddy car is Honda.

However, me being a person who wants to experience new cars, just wanted to buy a new car, and buying a new car would not have been possible without selling the City. Therefore, one last time, dear City, I am being selfish and giving you away.

Thank you for all the good times, My son and I shall miss you fondly.

[vdm]

Sorry to hear that you had to part with your Honda city to upgrade. I hope you have a similar bond with which ever car you upgrade to. All the best:thumbup:

[kippu]

I have so much fond memories of my friends honda city too, I learnt driving in that car and all the bachelor trips up and down the country , now the friend moved away and I have no idea where the city landed up

Good write up psn , thanks for reviving memories

[Nik2772]

Excellent write-up psn.

Sad to hear that you had to part with the car. But it is a part of life. We enthusiasts develop a strong bond with every car that we own. Assuming that you have not sold the car yet, I would suggest a detailed cleaning job (yourself) as a gift to your City for the memories it has shared with you. Hope she (or he?) goes in the right hands and the owner would care for it as much as you. Nice set of pictures, the car doesn't look 80k kms driven.

The last picture looks same (I know they are different by the different focus areas in both) as the previous one, by the way.

PS. A wax/polish job would increase the gloss and make it favourable for getting a fair price.

[arnabchak]

Hi PSN

Great to see the promised review/farewel note.

Though I know the new set of rides you have got, I would keep it safe with me and let you do the honours of announcing it.

Just a hint: PSN has got himself a new set of wheels that is capable of making him happy, very happy, on the road.

The City is such a gem of a car that customers are more happy than not and share a very strong bond with the car.

All the best with your new ride PSN and drive safe!!

[sudeepg]

Ah, this chimes perfectly with me. I am going through the same experiences.

I have done several long drives in my city.
I have changed tyres to the 195 section recently.
Currently preparing herself for some more mods
My son was brought home in the city.
His first words were not Honda, but it certainly is his & my car for him (although we have an i10 too)
He has grown up doing a lot of trips in the city and absolutely loves it. He even helps me clean the car although he is just 3.5 years old.
I have the habanero red too!

Sad to see the car leave, I was thinking the same of selling my city and moving to the Creta. I wanted to keep both, but finances won't allow. Finally, I decided to give her a makeover and keep her for long.

Planned mods
a. Leather seat covers
b. Head unit upgrade with parking sensors/camera
c. New floor mats (3d kagu already in use but worn out)
d. Projector head lamps.

I think I am going to keep her for a very long time and try to get the Creta too

[ssjr0498]

The city is not a 1.6ltr its a 1.5 ltr ivtec!

[itsashishsharma]

Right in the feels!
And now I am tempted to share my emotions that hit me as I saw my Swift go away. Starting a new write-up. Lets see if I would be able to finish it as well.

[psn]

Originally Posted by Nik2772

Excellent write-up psn.

Sad to hear that you had to part with the car. But it is a part of life. We enthusiasts develop a strong bond with every car that we own. Assuming that you have not sold the car yet, I would suggest a detailed cleaning job (yourself) as a gift to your City for the memories it has shared with you. Hope she (or he?) goes in the right hands and the owner would care for it as much as you. Nice set of pictures, the car doesn't look 80k kms driven.

The last picture looks same (I know they are different by the different focus areas in both) as the previous one, by the way.

PS. A wax/polish job would increase the gloss and make it favourable for getting a fair price.

I have already sold this off. It took time for me to gather my thoughts and put it on Team-bhp. These pictures were taken a day before the car was to go. Didn't get any extra clean-up job done, as somehow in my mind I thought it will probably get me as much extra money, as I spend on the clean-up job.

Originally Posted by sudeepg

Ah, this chimes perfectly with me. I am going through the same experiences.

Hi Sudeep, Nice to know that all of us share the same feelings towards our cars. your planned mods seem awesome.

Originally Posted by itsashishsharma

Right in the feels!
And now I am tempted to share my emotions that hit me as I saw my Swift go away. Starting a new write-up. Lets see if I would be able to finish it as well.

Satish, will wait to read your tribute too. The sight of seeing your car going is quite difficult. I am still made fun of by family, for crying at the age of 7 or 8,when I saw our Premier Padmini being driven off.

[StallionAmit]

The History:

Hi all, this post is about how I went from not knowing how to drive a car to buy 3 cars and sell 2 out of them in a span of one year. Well, the story is that I didn’t even knew driving and didn’t have a car till the time I was married. But my wife is an excellent driver and when we were expecting a baby it became more and more important for me to learn driving a car.

The Beginning:

To be honest right now I am crazy about cars and shows related to cars like Wheelers Dealers, Top Gear, Counting Cars, Garage Squad etc. and whatever show I can latch on to in my free time while this was not the case two years back, this may be because of I was not initiated to cars; I also think that I was also not having enough money to buy a car and maintain it. Well things changed after my MBA when I started to earn decent money but still buying a new car was a huge task in terms of money. Things further changed when I started a family it became more and more important to have a car. Just to tell the reader is that I am also a bike lover and have a Royal Enfield classic 350CC and I love it to the core.

The First Car:

While I took some driving lessons but I was still not very confident driving the car in full traffic roads so I decided to buy a used car.
I am working in a Steel company and in Feb’14 I got transferred to Bangalore and started searching for a used car. I searched the used car ads on Olx and considering my budget restricting me to spend less than 1L Rs, I zeroed on a Fiat Palio, Maruti Suzuki Zens and some Nanos. I first planned to go visit and see the Palio, well this was my first experience in buying a car and I was excited like a kid and fixed the deal for a 2002 year 1.6L petrol Fiat Palio GTX. I took a small personal loan to help with my purchase.

I got the ownership transferred and during the experience I learned that cars older than 10 years will be on 3rd party insurance and will not be covered under comprehensive insurance unless you get it inspected by the insurance company representative but after discussion with my wife we decided to get only the 3rd party insurance, I started driving the car in and around Bangalore and I drove it slowly and for that I got a lot of looks on Bangalore roads.







The car ran well for 3 months (I didn’t took it out outside Bangalore and ran it inside city only as one of my friendly neighborhood garage guy told me that it will not be a reliable car since its engine was tempered with and it was opened may be because of an accident etc.). But while on a trip to drop my relative to the Bangalore airport at the time of just entering the airport we saw smoke/steam coming out from under the hood/bonnet of the car. Thankfully it was a Sunday morning and hence we got a lot of time in hand. I had my wife with me and it was very early morning like 6 am but I didn’t know what to do, I parked the car in the parking lot and asked a radio cab driver for help on what to do, he looked at and told me that some pipe has burst leaking the coolant and recommended to keep pouring the water in the coolant tank and take it to the garage. I thanked him and paid him some money for his advice. I didn’t had any empty or filled bottle in my car so I collected some empty bottles which were thrown here and there in the airport parking lot and filled them all. Fortunately the car was starting and I started for the way back home and kept it below 3 gear and putting water in every 3-4 kms interval but steam/smoke was still coming from the car.
Well it a big ordeal to reach back home, also I could find any open garage on the way since it was early morning. While it took only 30 mins to come to the airport it took more than 3 hours to return back.

Next day I took it slowly to my friendly neighborhood garage (FNG) though I called the authorized service centers and tried to get the work done from there but I finally decided to get the work done by the FNG since it was closer and I can also learn a thing or two about cars in the process to address the issue.

The FNG guy told me that a inlet pipe got burst and he searched through his contacts to get it but he could not find it, I took the matters on my own hands and searched from shop to shop for the pipe and finally found it on one shop. The FNG guy okay-ed it and also thankfully the engine did not got damaged due to overheating. I enjoyed the car for 3 more months for the city trips. I changed the front two tires also for new. Things were okay with the car and one day my parents came down to Bangalore from Delhi and I sent the car to Delhi in a truck so that my father can also learn from it. Eventually my father exchanged the car in the exchange offer with the purchase of a Swift Dzire. So this was the story of my first car.

The Second Car:

Well driving cars is like an addiction and the more you drive the deeper you fell for more of it.So one day I was walking on the brigade road with my wife and a Mitsubishi Lancer zoomed past us, it was yellow in color and its exhaust was making a very sporty sound. I fell in love with the Lancer, the design, the stance of the car. I called my FNG guy and asked if he knows someone selling the car and he said yes. One of his known people was selling a Kerala registered car a 2002 Petrol model. I searched for some lancers on the Olx but could not find a good enough one. I decided to have a look at the FNG guy’s Lancer, the car had 38K on the ODO and since it was from a contact I went with it and fixed the deal with him. I again took a personal loan to help with the purchase. Very stupid of me. I seriously need to take some lessons in personal finances.











Well the car was a pleasure to drive and for the first time in my life I was driving such a big car. I did a 1000 Kms trip to Guruvayoor (Kerala) for my friend’s wedding and the car didn’t gave any issues at all. It returned a mileage of around 14.3 Kmpl. One of my college friend also accompanied with me in the trip and he also reassured that it was a very nice car and since he has been driving a longer time than me his words were a reassurance that my purchase was not bad.

In the mean time I paid the road tax for Karnataka and it was a whopping 47K for a 2002 car + 5K Cess + Agent fees and paying road tax and registering the car on my name was a task in itself since I didn’t had the original receipt with the car and hence the RTO guys took out the invoice of a 2002 Lancer and calculated the road tax. I tried hard that it was huge and stupid to pay so much road tax but anyways I was involved and had to pay it and also the RTO work took almost 3 months to transfer the car on my name. Anyways I enjoyed the car for the trips in and around Bangalore.

One day I thought of putting the car on Olx just to see if can sell it I got many immediate calls and thereby sold it to the first guy who contacted me. Well selling to this guy was a story in itself. He told me that he wanted to buy the car for his wife. He paid partial money and promised me that he will pay the remaining money soon citing some financial issues (well every one can have issues and I trusted him and his wife as they seemed decent folks). However this went on for 4 months and the guy stopped taking my calls and he also didn’t get the car transferred neither on his name nor to his wife’s and then I started panicking. To cut the long story short I finally received my money but that after a lot of followups and I also took charge of transferring the ownership from my name to the guy’s wife name and I spent money on it while the buyer has to bear the cost as per the norm. Anyways I am over it and this proved that sometimes buying and selling used things is not a cakewalk. The Lancer stayed with me for approx. 5 months.

The Third Car:

There was some silence on the car front but the bug to have a car again bite me again and I was again on the lookout. Honda Civic and Honda Jazz were my dream cars as I liked their designs but I can’t say the same in the present times. Just look at Honda Amaze and the new Jazz, Amaze is just like an extension of the Brio and the new Jazz is like cutting short the new City. What the heck Honda!! What has happened to your design engineers!! (I am sorry if this has hurt any one, these are my views and they may differ with others).

I looked for some old Civic and Jazzs on the classifieds this time apart from Olx on Car trade also. This time I went and saw some Jazz and Civics and didn’t just went for the first car I saw J. I also did some introspection on whether I should really be buying a used car at all or should I buy a new car at a later time (a smaller car which my budget could permit). A small car would cost me around 4L OTR (on the road) however I was getting a late 2007 or 2008 Honda Civic under 4L Rs post negotiations. My two earlier small personal loans being almost paid over, I was ready to take the plunge to buy another car by taking another personal loan with which my wife was really angry with me but what I can do? This is like an addiction. At least this is the only addiction I have. I purchased the 2007 Dec AT Civic. I promised myself that this is it no more cars.







Here is a summary of my car purchases May’14: Fiat Palio (exchanged in sept’15), Oct’14: Lancer (sold in Mar’15), May’15: Honda Civic (still with me ).

Honda Civic is an amazing car. I can go on and on about describing the benefits of this car. Its absolutely a looker, it looks so very beautiful, it drives so smoothly that I don’t know which present sedan can beat it. I mean it’s a 2007 car and I believe it can still beat some present sedans hand on. I did many trips to places like Yercaud, Chennai, Ooty etc. and with each trip I am falling in love with this car over and over again.

[RocketRaccoon]

You may have learnt to drive late my friend but all the 3 cars you chose are truly enthusiast cars so right off the bat I can say that you have a good eye. Silver Civic looks great and is a masterpiece. If it doesn't give you problems my advice is don't sell it (but that's your choice !) I share your opinions about the current stock of Honda cars. I always tell people Hyundai seems to be the new Honda. The quality compromise on the new Honda City and especially on the Amaze is appalling for lack of a better word.

[The Rationalist]

I hope your addiction doesn't ruin your finances. You are buying cars apparently for no reason and selling too! Never ever buy cars using personal loans! If you want to experience different cars, there is always lot of self rentals out there.

[john doe]

Buddy, first things first. Identify which amongst your friends is street smart and knows how to talk to people and can think a few steps ahead.

In future, please make sure that you discuss everything with this person before reaching for your ATM card, chequebook, etc.

For someone who is married and has a kid, the kind of decisions you have taken are really unexpected. These decisions can risk your safety, your finances and your work too. For example, the car which you sold and recd. payment after 4 months: what if the buyer had killed someone in a hit and run? It was in your name. Do you think the cops will spare you, even if they know that you had sold the car?

I am not even bringing up the wisdom of buying the Palio and the KL car!

I appreciate that you wrote all this down. Once again, I strongly urge you to discuss purchases / expenses with somebody , or even within this forum.