[Bob]

hi Aroongupta

welcome to team-bhp.
welcome to motherland too.

just check out the OPTRA.
i've bought OPTRA in last march & very happy with it.
it's really a head turner till now.{BLACK OPTRA 1.6 LS with BEIGE INTERIOR}
even in comparison between OPTRA v/s HONDA CITY,adwantage goes to OPTRA in many ways.

GOODLUCK.

thanx . . .BOB

[Aroongupta]

Thanks BOB.

Black Optra with beige interiors...what can go better than that? Never knew one can find beige inside a base version!

Can't wait to check out

[mclaren1885]

Originally Posted by Aroongupta

,

And that 'torture chamber' thing is perfect. I earlier posted a message asking a good audio option for around 30 K for my car. Boy! The responses left me comletely awstruck. People were ready to suggest specs for a 100K budget too. And I did not understand anything. What I knew (and I thot I was an audio expert :-( )was 2 front speakers, 2 ovals at the rear and a pair of tweeters. They told me about subs, highs, lows, LPF, HPF, coaxials, 6", 6"*9" 3 point amps, 2 point amps, unheard of brands and what not. I was so scared, I thot better not to share my naivity to the forum and kept quite. I am still shivering :-).

haha now thats a ICE speciality ...we try to cater to all needs but do go overboard quite a lot..but once you get a hang of ur budget the setup often recommended here would blow you off completely and is total paisa vasool..and ya about torchuring your white cells ya its true,but dont you think its necessary to know about the stuff that goes into your car in detail..admitted that you would take a longer time to finalize but its worth it,ask me lol i had to wait for 2 months to get my setup ready and now its as good as one can get across the country(all the bangalore bhpians will vouch for this)..enough said and done..

PS : do check this thread out..damn hilarious..
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/showth...?t=7684&page=3

[Bob]

hi Aroongupta

thanx for reply.

even you can check OPTRA ROYALE.they announce heighest FE in that model.
new color is available in that model too.
shoot it.
thanx . . .BOB

[imjimmy]

Aroon,

My strong recommendation would be to check out the Top end model of 1.6 Fiesta Petrol. It might be the car that could end up offering you the most of your very demanding expectations. I think a detailed review might be coming up here soon(Check out the thread on 1.4 Fiesta). But for now the car looks very impressive.
However just look for headroom issues for tall people..something i found in the front seats.

Top end Optra could also be a good choice.However be wary of low mileage and GM expensive ASS issues.

About the Baleno, many members of the forum(including me) have it. It comes recommended for pure uncensored driving pleasure and value for money - hence the choice of many enthusiasts here. But it will fall flat for snob value, interiors quality etc etc. Or if you have the gumption you can buy it and mod it to your heart's content to make a deadly machine.

Choose Wisely,and keep us in the loop.

[Steeroid]

Originally Posted by Aroongupta

And that 'torture chamber' thing is perfect. I earlier posted a message asking a good audio option for around 30 K for my car. Boy! The responses left me comletely awstruck. People were ready to suggest specs for a 100K budget too. And I did not understand anything. What I knew (and I thot I was an audio expert :-( )was 2 front speakers, 2 ovals at the rear and a pair of tweeters. They told me about subs, highs, lows, LPF, HPF, coaxials, 6", 6"*9" 3 point amps, 2 point amps, unheard of brands and what not. I was so scared, I thot better not to share my naivity to the forum and kept quite. I am still shivering :-).

Yeah dude the ICE forum certainly overwhelms you most of the time. You wonder if people are setting up the sound for a car or for a rock concert!

ICE sure makes you Shiver!

[Aroongupta]

Hey mclaren,

That thread you mentioned is 'dhamaal'. Downright hilarious.

And yes I completely agree with you. Its necessary and actually fun to know about the stuff in your car. In the whole process, you actually get to know more and that in turn makes you love the stuff more...leads to that proud feeling. Not to mention the 'spicy satisfaction' one receives in throwing the earned technical expertise to all lesser mortals then on . That's the best deal.

Since I will be in Pune, I can't come to Bangalore. Else I would have begged you to get the stuff done for me too. But I noticed Sam Kapasi is in Mumbai. That probably can work out. I will take the car to him. Any other suggestions?

[Aroongupta]

Thanks for teh suggestion Jimmy. I do plan to check out teh Fiesta too. However I am a bit pessimistic about the babe. Almost everybody who test drove it found it to be wanting more in terms of internal space.

Lets see...

[Aroongupta]

I started with a choice between Safari Dicor low end and Optra 1.6 base.

I got strong suggestions to check out the Fiesta and especially the Baleno too. I have obviously included both of these in my hunt.

Sadly (personally for me), nobody voted for the dicor. That's my first love actually. The fault is mine. The criteria I layed out had performance at the top and now I see that the beast takes a strong beating there and gets out of the race at the very first point.

Now after this humbling experience, I feel no shame in saying that I am more than willing to compromise on all factors. SOMEBODY please recommend Safari Dicor. Please give me strong positives as well as strong negatives about the car. All other marginal irritants I am ready to swallow or put aside. I just wanna make sure if it is really not a worth buying.

[GTO]

Sadly (personally for me), nobody voted for the dicor.

I feel no shame in saying that I am more than willing to compromise on all factors. SOMEBODY please recommend Safari Dicor. Please give me strong positives as well as strong negatives about the car. All other marginal irritants I am ready to swallow or put aside.

STEEROID, Where art thou?

GTO

[mclaren1885]

Originally Posted by Aroongupta

Since I will be in Pune, I can't come to Bangalore. Else I would have begged you to get the stuff done for me too. But I noticed Sam Kapasi is in Mumbai. That probably can work out. I will take the car to him. Any other suggestions?

i would be glad to help..hehe so you planning to run into sam during his honeymoon trip with his scorpio..hehe sorry sam couldnt resist..anyways sam would be glad to help if he is in town..still better meetup with our crazy DIY Mr.Navin..he will certainly freeze your brain cells with his advice and experiments..but beware your warned ..he is an extremist when it gets to audio(i can see all our ICE members nodding in agreement)..hehe..

and regarding DICOR who better to ask then steeroid and nithinbhag themselves,two proud owners of the beast or should i say beauty too(so that steeroid doesnt run over my humble zen in his dicor when he comes down to bangy..)..

[Aroongupta]

Mclaren, Sam and Navin,

Beware!

One more week and you gonna see a crawling beggar in front of your houses.

[Steeroid]

Originally Posted by Aroongupta

I started with a choice between Safari Dicor low end and Optra 1.6 base.

I got strong suggestions to check out the Fiesta and especially the Baleno too. I have obviously included both of these in my hunt.

Sadly (personally for me), nobody voted for the dicor. That's my first love actually. The fault is mine. The criteria I layed out had performance at the top and now I see that the beast takes a strong beating there and gets out of the race at the very first point.

Now after this humbling experience, I feel no shame in saying that I am more than willing to compromise on all factors. SOMEBODY please recommend Safari Dicor. Please give me strong positives as well as strong negatives about the car. All other marginal irritants I am ready to swallow or put aside. I just wanna make sure if it is really not a worth buying.

Aroongupta

I started out my Dicor purchase much like you - madly in love with the Safari and unsure of whether I should go for it.

For me the change of heart came with the change in the Safari's heart (the engine).

Let me put it this way - I'm having a ball with the vehicle. It RULES the highways and like I said in my earlier post it can easily maintain much higher speeds over long distances then ANY of your fast sedans in the market today simply because it just flies over obstacles that others will have to slow down for.

It is also the most comfortable vehicle on Indian roads today, Mercs included. Front seat and rear seat comfort is unparallelled, and I dont really consider the two jump seats to be seats.

Driving position and ergonomics are great. You feel everything is right as soon as you step into the vehicle.

It has presence, and like Nitin pointed out in his brief post sometime back, truck and bus drivers actualy move aside for you. Lets not talk about the smaller vehicles on the road - all you need to do is roll up to their rear windscreen and flash your lights twice.

While I feel the 3 litre engine is hiding a lot of horses (for fuel economy?), the vehicle is NO slouch as at least 3 other non-Dicor BHPians will testify - thats a souped up Palio (Pilot - McLaren), a very nice looking & sounding Baleno (Pilot - v1p3r) and a City Vtec (Pilot - a souped up Wolf). We had a brief drive on the Bangalore ring road and they were quite surprised to see a diesel willing to scuffle with the holy trinity of TBHP (the cars, not the drivers )..

Fuel economy is pretty good for a 3 litre as I get 11kmpl overall with my atrocious driving style. A normal person should be able to get much more.

Build quality is pretty good so far - I'm paranoid about rattles and that was the part I dreaded about buying a Tata (after hearing from others). However, there has not been a SINGLE rattle so far. My family will testify to this as I am infamous for stopping in the middle of a drive just to pick out what exactly is causing even the tiniest rattle - I simply cant drive ahead if I cant figure out what is causing the noise.

Now the negatives:

1. Is a Tata and there will be niggling issues (should've gone down quite a bit now that its been in production for a while). I've had issues with 3rd party components like the A/c and the starter motor, and issues with electrics like the cabin lights that seemed to have a mind of their own and a theft alarm which once went off in the middle of the night waking up the entire neighbourhood. The good thing is that service has been excellent and Tata doesnt bother repairing these things - all the troublesome components so far have been replaced by Subros (a/c), TVS (starter motor) and Minda (theft alarm wiring) respectively. HOWEVER, this obviously means that the QC of 3rd party components is bad. I wouldnt want to visit my authorized service centre for any reason other than regular service, so these additional visits even if free are unwanted and therefore black marks.

2. Vibrations - when I took the vehicle there were some serious vibrations at around 1700-1800 rpm as the vehicle accelerated. While these have now reduced in intensity, the engine obviously has a rough spot at that RPM under hard acceleration. You dont notice this if you're just cruising, though. Beyond this, the vibrations disappear and you hear more wind noise than engine noise at speeds of 100+ (yes, even at 140).

3. Plastics - they're an improvement over the old Safari, but I dont like the fake metallic finish for the centre console nor do I like the rather flimsy plastic door-release levers. I'm getting the former rectified as Koya's in Coimbatore will give you ANY finish on your dashboard (including real leather).

4. Switches on the centre console are iffy, not what you'd expect in a 10-lakh vehicle. No trouble so far, but I dont like the feel.

5. Steering takes some getting used to - you tend to think its vague in the beginning, till you sort out the steering yourselves. Once you've adjusted to it or sorted it out, its a breeze - ask Nash (artofzen on the forum) who thought the vehicle was pretty nimble as I was throwing her around like a Maruti 800.


Now the costs - the vehicle is not cheap, even if you do get a lot for your money. Base LX 4X2 version starts off at about 8 lakhs OTR. 4X4 costs about Rs.90,000 more. I bought me an EX 4X4 which was 10.70 OTR, and I am very happy with it. You can read about my buying and some driving experiences here:

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/showth...eferrerid=1788

Read about the Bangalore drive and various impressions here:

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/showpo...5&postcount=71

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/showpo...1&postcount=60

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/showpo...3&postcount=46


You can also PM TBHP member "Nitinbhag" for his experiences with the Safari. He's had a couple of minor issues as well, but he seems to be very happy with the beast.

Finally - the reason I did not push the Safari's case was

(1) your requirement seemed to call for a vehicle that wont be beaten in traffic light GPs, for which the Safari is NOT the right choice.

(2) you did mention "trouble free - No Garage visits needed"

(3) your budget maxed out at 9 lakhs

It did seem then that your requirements did not call for a Safari. I do not believe in pushing a vehicle simply because I like it or own it - every recommendation from this forum should be relevant to the requirements set out by the person requesting our help.

I hope this has been of use to you!

[Aroongupta]

Hi Steeroid,

Many thanks for your fantastic Inputs. Very valuable indeed!

The positives are nothing but fascinating. Dunno what really impressed me...the positives about the car or the way you presented them - straigtforward and very powerful! That's exactly what I need...Presence and speed on the highways. City driving i don't care much.

Seems like the negatives can be easily lived with. Anyhow which vehicle does not come with one set or another? They say...love is blind....so be it!

I am checking out the babe this sunday. Hopefuly (fingers tightly crossed), I like it. If I do... Monday I make a cashdown and then I wait for the baby to arrive.

Then I will again bother you for all the mod advice... & especially a HUGE music arrangement.

Did I say I will courier Laddoos too to your place . No no no...I mean it!

[Steeroid]

Originally Posted by Aroongupta

Did I say I will courier Laddoos too to your place . No no no...I mean it!

Thank you very much. The address is PO Box 2866, Dubai, UAE

Might cost you more to ship the laddoos than to buy them - I'll settle for a few beers at Geoffreys next time I'm in Mumbai