[raptor_diwan]

Not all Indians are fond of fast German cars. The majority of people prioritize practicality over speed and prefer a large SUV as a symbol of status and a means of transportation. Although additional features such as a panoramic sunroof can be enjoyable for family gatherings and photo shoots, this is especially true for those who are not automobile enthusiasts. Additionally, the high prices charged by service centers for even minor repairs can be daunting for new buyers.

[Veloster76]

My Simple reasons:
1. Not a good value for money products.
2. AC issues.
3. Initial reliability at the launch.
4.Competing with low price car of same segment like Nexon ,Brezza ,Venue .

During my own purchase decision what i felt that Skoda & VW test drives is their sales consultant sells their cars as a premium product. While a customer tries many products from different brand and finds other cars as offering more for less bucks.

[anubhav7286]

On a very different note, for me the car name caused me to drop off. I was in the market to buy a SUV in the 35L budget. I test drove the new VW Tiguan and really liked it. Spoke about my inclination to buy it to a few folks around and their reaction was "why are you downgrading to a small SUV". I had explain that the Tiguan is a full size SUV at about 35L and they were like isnt it the smallish SUV at around 15L. They were referring to the Taigun. Taigun and Tiguan sounds almost similar and I wont want to buy a car that sounds similar to its much younger sibling.

That aside, the poor reliability, horror stories of service centers resorting to frauds and in general not a lot of positive sentiments for the brand is my reason for low sales in these. The same is being seen in Virtus/Slavia as well.

[aniketi]

Average 2k numbers are not at all less considering it's a Skoda and VW. German brands will never sell in numbers in India due to their reliability issues and cost of service. So for me, these numbers are actually better than expected.

[abhkop]

Originally Posted by pqr

SAVW got a combination of four things wrong with their MQB 27 IN platform based SUV products.

• Price-to-size ratio.
• Price-to-feature ratio.
• Quality with respect to PQ25 platform based products.
• Lack of diesel as a fuel choice.

Still, they got two things right.

• A driver’s car.
• A safe car.

Now I will try to elucidate these points.

Summary

Thus, the SAVW SUVs don’t turn out to be a better family car due to their lack of SUV stance, less in-cabin space, fewer features to engage fellow passengers, and higher price.

SAVW got the value proposition wrong for India 2.0 SUV products. They don’t have attributes that Indian customers actually value (care), so it is not doing well for now.

Perfectly summed up. Would like to add couple of points.

- Majority of the customers in this segment are upgraders from compact cars. They need to clearly feel that the cabin space is larger than their existing cars.

- More than the extensive feature list, the main issue is that cost cutting is evident in a Rs 18-20L car. If a normal car buyer can spot this, he will surely and rightly shy away. The customer wants a sense of UPGRADE.

- The twins lacked an USP at the time of launch. Plus, both the cars launched in quick succession.

- When I have the safest car in the country, I'll make sure everyone in the country gets to know about it. I'm pretty sure Nexon and XUV3OO are still the safest cars for a lot of general public. There was not even an effort from VW group to promote this.

The point is if VW-Skoda are happy with their numbers, we are wasting our time analysing their missed potential.

[anand_roy]

Never again in my life would I buy a VW or a Skoda due to the following reasons:

(1) I bought a VW Polo immediately on it's launch. It's Engine Head went kaput within 2 years and needed a complete replacement. Fortunately, I had the extended warranty and did not have to pay. But, what about the German engineering? Have never had such an experience with a Maruti ever!

(2) My uncle owned a Skoda Octavia and the clutch gave away in less than 5 years. Had to pay 60K in 2010 to get that replaced.

So, we had two VW/Skoda in the family and both had mechanical issues. No VW/Polo ever again. They are just not reliable enough.

[Sanket299]

Here are my observations from several VW/ skoda ownership groups/YouTube videos/ Tbhp threads. As to why the Taigun/Kushaq/Virtus/Slavia are not as good/sell as good as the rivals. Please consider the following points.

• Horror stories regarding Warranty claims.
• Cars lying at SVCs for months due to spare parts shortage or what not.
• Cannot insrall any external accessories even on base model since it voids the warranty.
• High headed attitude of most skoda/VW dealers. Tbhp even has a thread on this.
• Long term relaiblity is not known for 2.0 cars.
• High maintenance.
• Heck! You cannot even buy and install a battery from outside without voiding the warranty.
Now About the car:
•Rattling and squeaking noise from everywhere for a year old car. Which are always temporarily fixed by VW/Skoda SVCs.
•Break noise is apparent in the 1.0 automatic while creeping in b2b traffic, parking and reversing. The brake pads makes a screeching sound and the ABS brings the car to a juddering halt.
•Jerky brakes. Brakes are not activated till a certain time and then they suddenly become too sharp.
• The 1.5L and 1.0L both have different brake pads and most SVC's might mix up which causes disc damage. And might blame you later.
•Aggressive creep function in 1.0 automatic. The acceleration is quite aggressive when parking in tight spots.
•AC ineffective and AC cutoff problem.
•AC whistling noise after every 20 sec when driving in a silent atmosphere
•Fuel injector issues (no peace of mind if you are in rural area).
•Consumes/burns lot more engine oil. Needs frequent topups. As compared to rivals.
•EPC error/ Fuel pump malfunction can leave the car stranded on road trips.
•Owners had to tow thier cars when it showed ESC & engine error due to loose engine air suction pipe (manufacturing assembly error)
•Infotainment system hangs multiple times with a message as 'component protection mode active'.
•Min 95 octane fuel mandated in the manual which is extremely difficult to find as well as little expensive.
•MT has issue of clutch pedal sticking to the bottom in excessive usage, mostly on mountains or bumper to bumper traffic/ chi chi sound from clutch after every operation.
•Power window one touch up doesn't work sometimes and it comes down on its own
•Transparent/open part of the sun blind making the AC ineffective by letting in sunlight heat
•Panel gaps.
•Piano black on the interior prone to scratches easily
•Cabin lamps comes apart and may fall down on pothole prone roads.
•Rear reading light had fallen off going over rumblers
•The cruise control button on the right panel of the steering wheel fell off on its own
•Noisy windows roll motor (annoying)
•Front ac vents are of cheap quality
•Noisy ventilated seats. Not as effective as the Korean or even Japanese rivals.
•Irritating Auto start stop switching off the engine on a speed breaker.
•Jerky rides on lower gears in DSG. D3-D2 transition is jerky when driven at City speeds, DSG is inherently jerky at city speeds.
•Wireless charger heating
•Erratic Android Auto/Apple CarPlay disconnecting and refusing to connect
•Steering alignment issues.
•No disk breaks at the rear.
•No physical control for A.C needing to take eyes off the road to fiddle with climatronic control.
•No height adjustable seatbelts.
•No sunglass holder(Virtus)
•Less wider rear seats. Which makes it good 4 seater. Middle portion feels like seating in a wooden seat.
•Seats which are supposed to be stock seat material, but looks more like after market seat covers. Fit and finish is very poor with lots of wrinkles, lines and loose fitting with exposed zippers, exposed stitching and poor contouring around the creases.
•No dynamic guidelines for reverse camera
•Low quality/resolution reverse camera
•No full fledged TPMS
•The music audio quality is a let down with no branded audio system in any variants even after paying close to 23L.
•Uncomfortable back seat recline angle
•Low mileage in city.
•Low quality plastics and cheap materials used for India-spec 2.0 models
•Inability of service centre to resolve issues. They are pathetically slow & poor in responding to query.
Regarding poor F.E of the 1.0L since the car is heavy it cannot move in slow traffic unless you rev the engine higher which spools the turbo thus leading to poor F.E.
Aside from the above mentioned points.
SAVW lacks the most in road presence. Looks at par with venue/ sonet on road. Which indeed doesn't justify the 23L for topend varient. VW/ skoda should
Increase the dimensions in the next iteration or maybe launch a different car altogether. And introduce a 1.5 naturally aspirated engine. With good F.E. because not everyone is a driving enthusiastic.
The VW tharu/taos looks perfect and apt for India.

[07CR]

Originally Posted by amiya.c

In simple words, these cars do not offer the "road presence" like its competitors Creta and Seltos in the segment.

Agreed. They shot themselves in the foot when their offerings were 4.2 M in length whereas the competition offered 4315mm or 4300 mm (Seltos/Creta). Not only the length, but even the width of 1760mm is shortest in the segment (Heck Sonet, Ecosport, Nexon, XUV300 have better width).

Infact, on pure dimensions alone both of these are smaller than my Ecosport S and Sonet in terms of height and width. I had once clicked a pic of a Kushaq and Sonet (hadn't purchased the sonet then) when they were standing side by side. I asked my mom, what do you think which of the two is bigger and expensive car. She was viewing them both head on and said without any hesitation, the Sonet looked marginally bigger.

Originally Posted by androdev

Lack of trust in the brand is the reason.

Product-market fit is actually fantastic.

Ford could not sell Endy as people only wanted to buy Fortuner. It’s all about the trust in the brand.

A little incorrect, Ford had run close to sells of Fortuner with Endeavour. Infact for few months the Endy even eclipsed Fortuner.

[blueather]

1.0 L variants are way too expensive.
Not so long ago you could buy Rapid Rider Plus for just 9 lakhs on road and that one had better interior quality.

And they should have offered some extra features like panoramic sunroof and AWD.

These European companies like Citroen and VW keep repeating same mistakes and major one is pricing their products too high.
I mean take a look at new C5 Aircross. It's costs 42 lakhs on road which is hilarious. Older one cost 37 lakhs. And it's competing in a segment which consists of BOF vehicles like Gloster, Fortuner and MUX. Even Tucson offers a very competent AWD at a lower price tag than C5.

And that is why VW should have price their new crossovers around 10 lakhs (entry level variant).

[KPR]

I chose an Italian over German when the choice was to get one European car. At 1.2 Lakh ODO and 8 years I'm a super-happy man. I doubt if I can be the same happy with Germans.

[niranjanprabhu]

My feeling is that both of the German twins are a good fist smaller than the Korean competition, both width wise and length wise. This coupled with lack of premium features such as a panoramic sunroof, has resulted in what I would consider as sub optimal sales. I don’t see them as failures since they also have sedans with amazing ground clearances, built on the same platform, same engines and gearboxes, which look much bigger in size and these are probably cannibalising into their sales as well though they are in a different segment

[sagsaw]

ONLY REASON

Big car feel missing, literally, in or out.

Kushaq and Taigun could have been 4350mm in length and wider given the MQB platform which is flexible.

However they came across as slightly bigger than the Venue Sonnet.

Road presence also similar to sub 4m suv.

That alone is a big factor.

[Elegant]

All the above being correct, I also think that people in India want a bigger size, for their money. Even when they pay such a amount, they get no road presence. I think that this also played a big role in their failure.

[argchoff]

These are the reasons I personally had for not going ahead with the purchase of the Taigun 1.5 model.

1. Poor paint quality with bubbles on paint surfaces (Similar issues in a few Jeeps including mine)

2. Very plain dated looks (personal opinion)

3. Metal plating felt thin, doors light, very surprised that it got 5 stars in GNCAP.

4. Size of the car felt like sitting in a hatchback but costing 22 lakhs. From the outside road presence felt like a hatchback

5. Interiors felt very cheap and poorly finished and did not feel like sitting in an upmarket car, but rather like a sub 5 lakh car like my s-presso. I drive a 2022 Jeep compass base model which costed me much lesser than the Taigun top model yet the interiors were super premium with excellent fit and finish.

6. Boot space is less.

7. At that time one had to pay extra for leather seats. The fabric seats offered by VW were dull and plain.

8. Manual variant came with only 2 airbags and 16 inch tyres

So final conclusion was that : Why pay over 22 lakhs for a small hatchback with small boot space, poor road presence, poor paint quality and poor quality of interiors when one can get to choose from MG Hector, Jeep compass, Tata harrier, the Korean twins or XUV 700 for a similar price for certain variants?

Kushaq though a much nicer looking car also lacked road presence.

[jackofsome]

Lets compare.

I drive a Ford Figo 1.5 TDCI. It is still a better handler than most of the current hatches or sedans on sale in India. It has all the absolutely necessary feature you would want to use while on a drive, it drives like a big car, the cabin quality is decent, space at the back is decent, the diesel engine is proper, parts are cheap to replace and the fuel efficiency just is the icing on the cake and most importantly of all, after test driving so many cars it still is relevant after 6.5 years and 100,000 kms.

Question is why didn't it sell? At all?

I believe, it all boils down to how a brand is perceived by the Aam Junta in India. Its somewhat is about herd mentality as well. Otherwise why would a Zen Estilo sell at all?

All of the above is off topic related to the cars i quoted, fate is the same.