Team-BHP - How to evaluate a new car

There are lots of car experts in TBHP & tons of them getting benifited on new car purchase/used car purchase, modifications, music systems, tyres and everything related to cars.

Though they get the necessary info/advice on car purchases, will it not be helpful to write your part on "HOW DO U EVALUATE A NEW CAR"

i.e
1. How to find out whether the interiors are good

2. How to check the quality of the plastics used

3. What are the things that needs to be looked inside the car ( eg - Leg room, seating comfort)

4. Explanations of what CC, BHP, TORQUE

5. How to check the quality of suspensions, brakes

6. On safety adn security and on instrumentation

7. How to find out whether the car offer good ride and handling

Iam aware that few things are subjective and few other things needs to felt rather than taught. But some info on these lines would help newbies to this industry to do some cooking on their own and get additional feedback from our site.

Few things I can tell
1. Subjective
2. Cheap plastics are shiny. Good ones have a softer feel and dont reflect much light. Also look at the switch gaps etc., Shoddy ones like on Tata cars are easy to spot
3. Sit on front passenger seat. At mid travel your knees should not touch dash. If they do then atleast on full back they should not touch. Back seat legroom check with max and min. Subjective.
4. Obvious. High torque at low rpm means better in city, high torque at higher rpm means highways star. Look for good torgue spread. ie. as flat a curve as possible
5. Breakes and suspension testdrive. About life of those parts, ask previous owners
6. Subjective on your needs
7. Take a few sharp turns, if you feel the car leans on its door handles, avoid if you are a handling freak.

Sooner or later this will be moved to the best-threads list i believe..

So lets get started.

1> Interiors:
I tend to sit on all the seats of the car to get the feel of comfort in various positions. Get a feel of the cushioning and seat adjustments. To me the driver's area needs to be non-cluttered, no loose wires hanging around. The position of the A, B, C needs to be easily accessible with free leg movements.. If something is obstructing my feet movement while at the driver's seat. The music-system, air-con should be easily reachable, the Dashboard should contain all basic functions. The dashboard light should not strain your eyes, especially during night driving. White Dash-boards with soothing green or blue background are my favourite.. Again, internal colour, texture, etc is something to gauge according to one's taste.

2> Quality of Plastics:
You can generally tell about the quality of plastics by pressing the hollow stuff, by Tapping, and also using the principles of static electricity. Rub against a plastic surface and then bring some small paper peices near the plastic. Better quality plastics generally generate more static current.

3> Important things inside the car:
- Head Room: Your head should be atleast 6-9 inches away from the roof.
- Leg Room Front Seat: Your legs should be free to move around with the front passenger's seat taken completely in front. It should not be cluttered with other things. Your knees should be atleast 1-foot away from the glove-box. And you should be able to turn your knees on both sides by approximately 45 degrees.
- Leg Room Driver's Seat: There should be no cluttering. And the A, B, C should be instinctively seperated. Enuf said.
- Rear Seat Leg Room: With the front driver's and co-passenger's seat fully pushed backwards, there should be about 6-8 inches of space between your knees and the front seat. You should be able to push yourself down in the seat by putting a pillow to support your lower back and resting your head on the rear-seat head rest and there should still be sufficient leg room.

I'll write about more things later.. Right now got to rush to get back to other things..

1. Check for any foul smell.
2. Looking at the finish of the platic will give an idea, touching the dashboard will give a rough idea about the plastics.
3. Legroom ( Sit everywhere, and make all the people who are going to sit in the car after purchase to sit at their respective places, with the seat adjustment of the drives as its going to be. Check headroom, back support ( it would be better to take a long drive to know)
4. This would be homework, before coming to dealer should be knowing the figures as the sales guy mostly tends to say what ever figures comes to his mind.
5. Suspension - Jumping on a breaker or driving through pot holes in speed will give an idea of the suspension. Full brakes to be applied from 80 will give you a rough idea of the braking.
6. All this can be checked in the brochure, and the manual of the car.
7. Ride is again on bad roads and handling can be seen by taking corners at fast speed.

Few things to add:
1. If you are a tall person, dont come to a conclusion regarding the comfort after moving the seats backwards. Remember that particularly in small cars, if you push the seat backwards, then you have to start reaching out to the gearshift. The gear shift should be at an ideal distance otherwise it can get annoying.
2. If you are planning to buy a car for a family...eg husband wife and 2 kids or parents etc..make sure you take them on the test drive. Particularly, if you have senior folks in your house. Some cars are very hard to get in and get out. So its better to take feedback from them.
3. There are good driver cars and good chauffer driven cars. So decide first whether it will be chauffer driven, and go for the cars with best rear seats.
4. Cars are like any other buys (TV/Home audio), its personal satisfaction that counts. For eg. Most of my friends dont have an issue with power with New Honda City. They are happy with it. I am sure lots of them will say its unexciting. So its personal preference.
5. Quality of interiors: First thing to observe is the thud of the door when it is closed. A firm one indicates good quality stuff. Another indication is to check the glove compartment etc. If you open and close it, the way it fits back indicates good quality. Sometimes you start seeing it hanging around. Also check the inner part of the compartments, the finish of the car interior shows up !..
6. When buying the car, the dealer will promise you free console box, floor mats, etc... ask him for a discount and choose better quality ones...the free ones are pretty ordinary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tsk1979

Few things I can tell

4. Obvious. High torque at low rpm means better in city, high torque at higher rpm means highways star. Look for good torgue spread. ie. as flat a curve as possible

Tsk, how do u rate the given below figures

CAR-1 : 91bhp@5500rpm , torque - 130.5Nm@3000rpm , Wt - 985 kgs (1600 cc)
CAR-2 : 106bhp@6800rpm , torque - 135@4700rpm , Wt - 985 kgs (1500 cc)
CAR-3 : 87bho@6000rpm , torque - 113@4500rpm , Wt - 1000kgs (1300 cc)

If you can throw some light and characteristics of the cars with the specs above (an rough idea how the car would behave). This is purely to understand the terms and method of evaluation.

Let me add my few cents...

1. Very subjective. My personal choice is light colour interior. Convenience (Cup holder, arm rest for driver, armrest for back seat, elegence, consistency (in colour, buttons, pannels etc.)

2. Just look at them carefully. Compare with other cars. I like matte finish, smooth plastics.

3. Seat at your convenient driver position. Also keep the companion seat at the same level. Go behind and see the leg room. Look for convenience. Are there are arm rest, place for water bottle/soda.

4. I do not know much in this subject. For dummies like me, what I feel is Bhp makes more sense to compare rather than cc.

5. You need to drive on bad roads, bumps, un-tarred road (you do not have to serach much in Bangalore) with a rear passenger and see the response both on front and back. Sharp turns and driving zigzag (ofcourse on empty road, which is rare) and seeing the response helps.

6. Seat belts are must even on rear seats. Good to have ABS/ airbags. Child lock is must if you have (or plan to have) kids. Warning for low fuel, no seat belt, one touch indicator (touch once and it blinks 3 times, I am yet to see on Indian cars) are good to have.

7. See the response at different speeds, try taking turn at higher speed, response to sudden throttle and break etc. will give a feel of ride quality.

Hi Guys

Does anybody know if Volksvogen Golf coming to India? Any guess what price range it would be in? (I have driven this quite a lot in Europe and one of the great car to drive.)
Also, any idea about Ford Focus coming to India? I hear lot ot roumers.

I feel the convenience/luxery part in cars are very low on Indian cars even the C/D segment cars. All the car I have driven in Europe have lot of small feature, which make the driving very convenient. As an example, one touch indicator (blinks thrice) to change lane, seat belt warning, warning about tear of breaks etc. I have even drive one Opel hutchback car, where a rear seat gets hidden. So, it becomes a seven seater with no luggage space, when you require. And much smaller than Toyota Innova.

I think, the indian car industry needs to get our power/cost competetion and look beyond to give convenience and comfort to customers.

Saroj

Quote:

Originally Posted by Surprise

To understand the characteristics of the cars we do some calculations:
We find out the torque at max bhp and divide the first two cars torques by .985 to get it per ton.
We assume that 1000 rpm is around the idle rpm.
Adjustment for 1000 kg is done by dividing by 985/1000.
% range example CAR-1 (5500-3000)/(5500-1000)
torque dip = (130.5-116.2)/(2.500) and (14.3/55.5)

CAR-1: Torque
130.5Nm @ 3000rpm and 116.2Nm @ 5500rpm - Wt 985 kgs
132.5Nm @ 3000rpm and 118.0Nm @ 5500rom - for 1000 kgs
between 3000 and 5500 (2500 rpm range = 55.5% of max range) torque dip = 5.72Nm/1000rpm (.26/%)

CAR-2: Torque
135.0Nm @ 4700rpm and 109.5Nm @ 6800rpm - Wt 985 kgs
137.0Nm @ 4700rpm and 111.2Nm @ 6800rom - for 1000 kgs
between 4700 and 6800 (2100 rpm range = 36.2% of max range) torque dip = 12.1Nm/1000rpm (.70/%)

CAR-3: Torque
113.0Nm @ 4500rpm and 101.8Nm @ 6800rpm - Wt 1000 kgs
between 4500 and 6800 (2300 rpm range = 39.6% of max range) torque dip = 4.87Nm/1000rpm (.28/%)

Acceleration:
If you test driven Ikon and fiesta or NHC Vtec or OHC Vtec, you must have come to know that although new cars have good accelaration figures but you don't feel the acceleration. Now if you see the above figures you find that CAR-1 and CAR-3 has got almost same figures of torque dip (in percent) but CAR-2 has highest torque dip (around 0.7), so CAR-2 is going to give the accelaration tug (the sudden surge) if you are "floor the pedal" type of driver. If you are light footed driver and prefer to keep a car in narrow rpm margin and like to use gear then CAR-3 will give you smoothest accelaration (4.87Nm/1000rpm). But the best (smoothest) driveability is offered by CAR-1 (the sudden surge won't be there like CAR-2). You can see that CAR-1 has got a max torque at the lowest rpm. Therefore (assuming the gear ratios to be almost same), when you have reduced the speed of CAR-1 to quite low speed (around 3000 or say 2700 rpm - which is the normal driving conditions), this one will have maximum torque margin to accelerate and won't require gear changing compared to others.

Top speed:
The CAR-2 has got the max torque closer to max rpm and also max power is highest, it will be probably be having the highest top speed. The CAR-3 again has got the max torque closer to max rpm, but again you can see that CAR-1 has still 118.0Nm at 5500 rpm which higher than 113.0Nm and hence the CAR-3 will be having the lowest top speed.
To analyse the 0-100 or 0-60, you have to have gearing and resistance charaterstics of the car, but going be the thumb rule, CAR-2 has got highest bhp and highest redline rpm, so it will last longer in lowest gear and hence give best acceleration figures. CAR-1 and CAR-3 amy be quite close to each other although CAR-1 seems to have an edge.

You can visit Under the hood > Technical > Physics behind car movement
or http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/techni...-movement.html