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I was in a similar dilemma while purchasing a new car for me. The budget was 10 to 11 lacs and the obvious choices were the CSUVs. But coming from Honda Jazz none of them felt like an upgrade in terms of space. Infact venue felt even smaller. Xuv300 has a boot equivalent to swift.

Brezza and Nexon were the only one with decent rear space and boot. Both in their petrol forms were absolutely boring. I cant drive a car which does not make me smile. Add to that the side to side movement over bad roads and body roll. :Frustrati . Also the fact that i have driven hatchbacks all my life and I never felt the need for extra GC in my city Indore. Finally went with the Rapid Tsi.. Gem of an engine excellent ride and handling. :)

As long as am in Bangalore I wouldnt think of buying a sedan again. Road infrastructure and unscientific humps here will make you feel time & again why you went for a sedan. In my case I have a 2012 City and I live in an area where there is a hump every 100 meters. If am driving with my family my mind will always be like "how will I manage this hump without bottoming out". To add, I feel City has more soft sprung suspensions than other sedans making it to bottom out even in the smallest of humps.

There are also potholes just after humps post the rains now that will make the experience even more nightmarish and God forbid will leave you with huge repair costs.

Though I love the drive experience of a sedan, I would never buy one unless the roads within a city improve.

+1 to what you said there. A Honda runs trouble free for ages with only scheduled maintenance, no Euro tantrums. ;)

You can put this down to the boat like ride I referred to earlier on this thread. It's simply the nature of the beast. It gets worse on mountainous roads.

Phew! Never thought this post will get such detailed, extensive replies which gives general overview of the trend. Thanks for all the replies and insight.

But my question was, why people still go for SUV when the roads are good, like where I reside. It is simple, people think SUV = Macho! It has nothing to do with road condition. They want the commanding road presence and it stems mostly from the bullying mindset(not all of them) if I am not wrong. Big vehicle = Right of way. If a Fortuner flashes it's light, puny vehicles like Sedan, hatch should leave aside and let him pass. Can we add this into the list of the reasons of owning a SUV?

And for others who is not into bullying, road condition matters a lot. That is a valid reason and I accept that. So I can understand the need for high GC. But for a driving enthusiast, who let go off a Sedan to own a SUV due to poor road infrastructure, does driving a SUV gives the same pleasure as driving a sedan? Give me your honest opinion.

The Sedan option, be it C or D segment, see's no new entrants and options seems to be dwindling. If the current trend continues to next few years, doesn't it give manufacturers the wrong idea to discontinue the sedan lines altogether? Like what Ford did? This is what I am afraid. Let's hope that doesn't happen!

I have lost count on the number of times I have had to slow down to almost zero, because a Sedan in front was doing some kind of a circus to avoid scraping on a typical road hump. A normal road hump which we find on every other road in Bangalore, not even a giant hump!.

A cousin of mine owned a Honda City from 2006 till about 3 years ago. Though I never drove it, I had been on a few long and short drives. I heard the thud so many times that at one stage, no one even took it seriously :). Rest was in God's hands.

Though I believe the later models of the Honda City fixed the abysmal ground clearance issue to some extent, this heart attack every few minutes when we took some interior roads in some rural areas, left us shaking our heads in disbelief.

He owns a Duster now and blasts through the same roads without a care :thumbs up.

I wouldn't say it is end of sedan era as Maruti Dzire and Honda Amaze are selling in good numbers. Maruti smartly increased ground clearance of Dzire to make it more suitable for Indian roads and speed breakers. On the other hand Honda didn't compromise on the ground clearance of Honda city. It is still low slung car that scrape its belly on tall speed breaker, if not driven carefully. This all have diminishing effect on low slung sedan cars in India.

SUV craze started recently in urban India. Our, pathetic roads, unscientific, unmarked speed breakers are responsible for that. Recently, self driven car in Bhutan. Roads are fantastic. They are built by Indian companies. If it so then why road quality is so poor in India?

I feel sedans are surely loosing space in the market with so many nice options available in cross-overs and compact SUV's, with the advent of many monocoque chassis models which give almost equivalent ride comfort as compared to a sedan combined with the additional ground clearance, better all round visibility, good road presence and we get a more practical car for Indian road conditions. Given the plethora of models and fuel/engine + gearbox variants available today at different price range, there is one crossover/SUV for everyone.

Though practicality of higher GC on our roads can't be understated still I think it's very intriguing, because even in mature markets like USA, SUV vs sedan ratio fluctuate with fuel prices.

And we have fuel prices at all times high but our "kitna deti hai" brigade seemingly can't care less.

This disturbing trend is spreading like wild fire. People are missold into thinking they own an “SUV” while reality is not even an MPV. Most are tall hatches. I call them Vatches.

Manufactures thought. Let’s take a good sedan. Make it uglier, taller, heavier, bouncier, slower , less aerodynamic, dynamically inferior, less agile, call it an SUV and charge 20% higher. Genius!

Most buy just for image. It’s gotten so bad even Aston Martins, Rolls Royce and even Ferrari is not spared.

A pseudo SUV will never match the regality and dynamic abilities of a sedan. And none of these pseudo soft roaders can off-road anyways. Combined with pseudo SUVs, proliferation of electric cars, not a good time for a petrolhead.
Let me leave with a relevant quote by Chris Harris while driving he Rolls Royce cullinan here

More people are buying SUVs and trucks (Ford F150) in large numbers even in USA where the roads are butter smooth, so road condition is not and cannot be the primary driver.
Nor the oft claimed offroading capabilities of most SUV/crossovers.
99% of the people who buy SUVs or crossovers never offroad. Actually most of the SUVs and crossovers actually can't be offroaded in any meaningful way because they were not designed or built to be offroaded and do not have the required engineering of a real and authentic offroad capable SUV.
These SUVs are actually sedans in a SUV's garb, that is they are designed and built to driven on tarmac but look like an offroader.
The reason most people are buying SUVs and crossovers are for the image of agressive macho and the other reasons like GC etc. are proferred by most are just to hide the fact that it is an emotional desire rather than a rational desire and for the buyer to seem rational and logical to us sedan buyers:)

See the below part which I mentioned in my previous post. Yes, that's the mindset of majority of the buyer who purchase an SUV!

:D I couldn't stop laughing at his comment. Agreed with your points. Even the premium segments are leaning towards SUV trend and I don't know where it will lead us to? A Ferrari with no sedan in it's portfolio might be a reality, sooner or later?

Right on the spot! Well articulated and exactly what I had in mind. Thanks!:thumbs up

Here is the reality as it (Sedans) stands in 2020, so far!

- 48% Y-O-Y dip.
- Worst affected across segments
- Minus Dzire will lead to a miniscule market share of this segment
- 9% in the total Market Share




Source: Auto Punditz

This thread title disturbs me a lot. Yes I owned 3 cars and all of them were sedan, I love them. On a lighter not I am happy that I was lucky enough to own three of them by now at an age of 25 and still drives one. But what makes me sad is that will I be able to buy one good sedan, maybe 10-15 years later ? I know that's a pretty long time and the automotive industry might be completely different from what we have now. But that doesn't stop me from dreaming of owning a beautiful S-Class or Seven.

Another concern for me is the way sedans are designed now. The new S or Seven can't hold a candle to its predecessors. Do we really have any elegant sedan left in the market ? Maybe the Bentley Flying Spur ? Even the 2020 Rolls-Royce looks 'modernized' , still remains acceptable though compared to the S and Seven.

Are the companies purposefully designing their sedans in an awkward way these days hoping that buyers would go for their SUVs instead ? They themselves want to kill the remaining sedan market it seems.

Like some of you had mentioned here, the real reason behind this is neither the bad roads nor the high ground clearance, it is just the pseudo-SUVish feel that someone gets when sitting 200mm upwards of the road, that's all!!

There we go!. Hatch on stilts or pseudo SUV or Crossover or whatever they are, they do most of what an SUV does and everything that a Sedan does (even better). Only a miniscule number on buyers need SUVs for off roading. They will anyway buy a proper SUV with AWD capabilities.