Team-BHP - Why did you buy a diesel?

No Bruty, you are not doing anything wrong except for the fact that you missed out on several things in your comparison:

1. Safety - Safari is more safer than Zen
2. Space - You can seat 8 in a Safari unlike 5 who fit in a Zen with difficulty (now don't say that you could fit 6 or 7 of them in Zen of reed thin structure)
3. Zen will scrape its underbelly if fully loaded unlike the Safari
4. The pure joy of off roading that is not available in Zen..

There are many things that one could go on and on but your comparison is faulty primarily since you are comparing a 900 CC engine to a 2 ltr behemoth. Comparison, if done, has to be between rivals of the same size..

Quote:

Originally Posted by bruty (Post 460466)

based on the suggestions given by all of you. I was doing a bit calculations. i have Zen at this moment gives me around on average FE of 13. so if we take 1000 km per month the fuel bill will be: 1000/13=77 ltr of petrol which will cost 77*43.52=Rs 3351. if i switch to safari i will get Fe of 9.2-9.5 on average. taking 9.5 Fe the total diesel required will be 1000/9.5=105 whcih will cost 105*32.47=Rs 3417. So it will cost most monthly.
Let em know if I am doing some thing wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaggu (Post 463810)

regular service at 10 k interval, first, second and 3rd service at 1k km, 5k kms and 10k kms then on every 10k kms only.

i would prefer to do an oil change alone every 5 k kms coz it will cost just 800 bucks in bangalore and is worth it ;)

Jaggu - Not sure whether you need a 5K oil change at all. Maruti recommends a 10K change and am sure the oil they use will hold on to the 10 K limit easily. If you go by Maruti's reputation they change Oils/Fluids in a much higher frequency and are pretty conservative on maintenance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bruty (Post 459155)

I could not understand the fact or reason behind number of KM you clock in a signle day to decide for petrol or disel car. take an example of 1000 Km per month. can some one through light on this.

The reason for this is the cost difference between the petrol and diesel versions of the same or similar car.

For example: Ex-showroom price (as in May 2007) in Pune for

Swift Vxi is 426766
Swift VDi is 505056

The cost difference works out to be Rs. 78290. Add to this the additional insurance cost, registration charges etc. To recover this amount in terms of the cost difference between diesel and petrol and in terms of the better mileage offered by the diesel sibling, you will have to travel a certain number of kilometers. Let us assume a cost difference of Rs. 10 between petrol (49) and diesel (39) and a mileage difference of 4 km (petrol 14 kmpl and diesel 18 kmpl). If you travel 2000 km every month, you will save approximately Rs. 2600 every month and it will take you nearly 30 months to break even.

If the cars were priced without this difference, I am sure a lot more people will buy diesels. The older problems like higher maintenance cost, greater noise, poor performance etc. are no longer true with modern day diesel engines.

I have no idea why the car manufacturers keep such huge gaps between the pricing of these vehicles.

-Biju.

Low cost of fuel. Thats why I bought my diesel.
I now take a longer between home and work with less traffic hassles and not a thought about the extra cost.
My earlier car was a M800 and I used to fill up every week. I now fill up every two weeks in my viva CRDI and the cost is nearly the same.

Biju: I read an article that said that a lot more money goes into the research for diesel engines (compared to petrol engines) to reduce emissions, etc., and this gets passed on to the customer, thereby raising the cost of the diesel version of the car. Not sure how true this is, but it sounds like a reasonable explanation.

most of the cars i have are diesels and the petrol ones are either turbo or v8 or flat 4/6, unless the petrols are somewhat special to drive and it gives you back something more than just a drive i think its better and more interesting to drive a diesel as a daily use car. out of all the diesels i have the best is by far the inline 6 cylinder mercedes 300D turbo, it pulls like a rocket and outperforms other petrol engines in the same category, the other engine is the nissan patrol 4200diesel, we have 3 in the family and one has done over 410,000km and it still rocks! the diesels have a certain charm in driving...the normal petrol engine just cant deliver that...unless its a 911!

dad wanted an indica diesel because :
he wanted to 'feel' the engine to change gears
he liked the slow pickup of the diesel
We ended up buying the turbo, why? one word, torque !
plus in the indica range , the turbo seems to be the top of the line , esp the 14 inch wheels !
And i have a lot more faith in tata's diesel engines