Part 5: Initial customer response and debates over styling......
Fall 1998.
These 2 cars are design extremes, way too futuristic for our tastes, and debates start in the community as which one looks more ugly and which one looks cute.
Hyundai mentions that its santro is India's first tall boy design designed to maximize passenger space, more so in terms of headroom and interior volume, that allows you to even stretch while sitting, a rare luxury of a car this size. Its a car that stands out in a sea of old jelly bean shapes and convectional hatchbacks, claims Hyundai on its brochure, clearly targeting the zen.
The public meanwhile, so used to classic timeless lines of the jellybean zen, stare aghast when they see the santro in the flesh for the first time on Hyundai showrooms, all represented by flashy decorated corporate boards with graffiti-on-white scheme.
People call it a frog, some even call it a giant rodent with a tooth but in reality, it does look hideous, especially with that goofy eyed headlights, that toothy cheese cutter grille, and that mickey mouse eared OSRVM, followed by that gargantuan windscreen and cartoonish bonnet.
The styling clearly looks too forced and excessive, with an overdose of creases and curves, especially on the sides. The flat rear looks as if it was butchered up by an angry wrestler, but when viewed on from dead rear, it looks palatable, like a modern hatchback.
Now while the debates continue, it is just a matter of time when the Indian public realizes the thoughts behind that hideous design like:
- The tall design enables easy entry and exit without the need to bend often, a plus point for women and oldies.
- High seating position means a good visibility of road ahead and less feeling of vulnerability unlike a zen.
- high rear seat which means that you sit on them rather than in them, a plus point for tall people.
- tall height means more headroom, especially for 6 footers who no longer had to brush themselves against the ceiling.
Now even though the interior was too overdone like the exterior with a rounded clam shell designed dashboard, the controls are very easy to operate and user friendly, everything falling so easily to hand, while the interior at night resembles close to a cockpit, so radical it is.
The tall seat was often referred to as the driver's throne and the santro was the first kei-car to come with a dead pedal (the other being the large uno), making long drives less painful and more pleasurable.
Competitive pricing aside, the santro bought many firsts to the Indian small car market like:
- first small car with an MPFI engine controlled by an 8-bit ECU
- first small car with a multi-valve design
- first small car with power operated windows,front fog lamps, rear defogger/wiper/washer and central locking
- first small car with all 4 adjustable head restraints on all models, designed to maximize safety
- first Indian mass produced car with rear seat belts offered as standard (on DX2) for added safety.
- first petrol small car with a power steering (after the diesel uno)
Moreover, the way the doors shut with a modern thud endeared to the Indian public that this car will last long on our roads, and its body shell is reliable and durable. To show this, a new ad commercial was aired showing SRK performing all types of torture tests (and later in 2000 in the movie phir bhi dil hai hindustani), when he asked Kim,"can your car handle Indian roads?"
The car came out with flying colours in those ads.
Two weeks after the booking opened, the initial public reaction was positive and despite all the styling related debates, about 15,000 santros were booked with full booking amounts, out of those, more than half opted for the basic model.The Indian public had now acquired some knowledge about the santro's attributes and to add an icing to the cake, the engine was smooth, refined and pretty efficient. ride was decent, if bumpy at the rear and the suspension was designed to tackle the worst of the Indian roads, unlike that of the zen which simply crashed through potholes and other broke roads.
Now what about the matiz? though it looked unconventional, the ladies absolutely loved its cute cuddly looks and were waiting for the car to be out. That car was a marvel in interior packaging.
While the santro went upwards to maximise interior space, the matiz adopted a cab forward design, a first in its class for the Indian market, in which the engine and mechanicals were tucked in the extremes of the car (the tight engine packaging as a result of this) and the front windscreen and bonnet merged with each other so that the simplistic looking cockpit resembling dashboard can be put forward in an effort to scoop as much space as possible with that small footprint. Simply put, the matiz was clearly far ahead in leg space and width (more so than the santro and zen and often highlighted in its print ads), and this was a car that had it all what a family of 4 people were looking for, who were drawn away from santro's gawky appearance.
While the engine was of course unrefined and underpowered 3 cylinder MPFI, its configuration provided it with best in class mileage. But Daewoo India, so overconfident with its matiz, screwed it all up when it came to pricing and simply overpriced the car by at Rs. 3,55,000 for the sole SE model on offer, about Rs. 50-60,000 more than what was expected.
As a result, the public declared it as a dud, and initial sales were just as it-dismal. Only in UP was the car selling decently, part due to the huge difference in sales tax, where it was exempted at that time.
Otherwise, all the colonies were full of Santros and only santros, the zen still selling decently and only helped with the introduction of a cheaper LX model at a later stage.
Seeing the dismal response, Daewoo started huge print ads with various fashion models and designers showcasing on the car's strength-styling and the many awards it won over the world for its beautiful Guigiaro design.
It highlighted the concept of 5S- super power- highlighting the 52bp figure from just 796 cc, too good to believe
- safety-highlighting as the only small car in India to have passed 56kmph offset frontal crash test and 70 kmph ELK moose stability test
- space-highlighting the huge amount of legroom and shoulder room in a compact footprint as a result of its mono volume design.
- style-Italian design by Guigiaro photographed with various models
- savings-highlighting its best in class mileage from the puny 800 cc 3 cylinder engine and long service intervals
Still, the single-varient-only car was not selling and dealers were pressurizing Daewoo to slash its price and to introduce a no frills model with only AC and black bumpers at a cheaper price was being pressed on, especially on the north, going by the huge takers to the santro's base model.
To add to dae-woes, auto India carried out a 4000 km comparison test clearly stating the matiz is a inferior product to the santro as its engine, though efficient was too underpowered and accelerated at much less then the quoted horsepower claims, especially with the AC on.
Matters that not helped were its inflated price tag and substandard level of standard equipment.
Confused marketing policies only added to more nails the matiz's coffin.
The matiz will eventually fight back, more on that later....
Now while the Korean cola wars are reaching its peak, a series of huge full size ads start appearing on the newspapers proclaiming that its the end of year and its the end of the small car.....
What was that? and how will the car wars move from here? Find out in part 6, coming up next. 
19th November 2009, 20:58
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