[GRV]

Hi
Recently celebrated (in Oct 08) 1st Birthday of my GV. Though I still like my GV, but extent of my love has certainly gone down (so much that I recently advised my colleague not to buy GV )

In Oct I was down with Dengue and drove the car after 4 weeks of bed rest. Feeling a bit weak, I realised how tuff is it to drive GV in morning traffic. The low end torque was clearly painful as it required constant shifting of gear that added to discomfort of my fever stricken weak body

The Hard suspension was adding on to my woes and the black seat cover has dust spot all over (which refuse to go with normal cleaning).

Mulling over all these I came to the following conclusion

1. The car is good , a niche car but considering the price it is not value
for money at all from practical angle

1.1 No driving pleasure, underpowered and unrefined engine

1.2 Gear change not smooth

1.3 Stiff ride (specially this rainy season, gurgaon roads were so bad)

1.5 Very basic interiors

1.6 Squeaks from atleast 4 places while driving

only plus point is that it is 4 wheel drive with low range gear. But In India where ever I have gone with this car (highest place visit is Chitkul in Sangla Valley at 3500 meters), I have seen Alto, therefore not sure how practical / useful is the low range

Only area where it is fantastic is looks department

But as I have spent my money, I am really looking for advise on how to modify the car for

1. Increased Power

2. Softer suspension / pliant ride

Please help

Thanks
GRV

[Guna]

GRV
How is the fuel efficiency of your GV?

[Vishal M]

Thanks GRV

This is very disappointing for me. I was indeed thinking of buying a GV in January after selling my Honda Civic. I wanted to buy a Compact and tall SUV, so had zeroed on GV - am yet to do test drive next week. Could you share some experiences - Manitances cost, FE, Road view etc

Thanks

[raj_5004]

Originally Posted by GRV

Hi
Recently celebrated (in Oct 08) 1st Birthday of my GV. Though I still like my GV, but extent of my love has certainly gone down (so much that I recently advised my colleague not to buy GV )

The Hard suspension was adding on to my woes and the black seat cover has dust spot all over (which refuse to go with normal cleaning).

Mulling over all these I came to the following conclusion

1. The car is good , a niche car but considering the price it is not value
for money at all from practical angle

1.1 No driving pleasure, underpowered and unrefined engine

1.2 Gear change not smooth

1.3 Stiff ride (specially this rainy season, gurgaon roads were so bad)

1.5 Very basic interiors

hey buddy, sad to hear that. maybe you can try out some performance stuffs which are available in plenty for petrols.

incidentally, when i complained about the same points of the GV few months back in another thread, everybody charged on me saying that i know nothing and i must have never sat in a GV!

[ravibhat]

GV is good vehicle If you can live with few niggles and few irritating things after buying it.

Few owners cant live with such irritating things so they don't like, few members adjust to minor issues so they will be used to like it.

What I found is good looking vehicle is poor technically and vice versa.

Example: Safari(excellant look, poor vehicle with million issues), Grand Vitara(good looker with many minor issues), Innova(not tasty one but excellant refinement), Swift(hot looker but minor irritating issues) are vehicles I came across so far.

Every vehicle has one or other positive and negative aspect :(

Ravi.

[CtrlAltDel]

i have never read a positive review of GV till date. the FE sucks too. I wonder why Maruti is not discontinuing it.

[Samurai]

I too completed one year with my GV last month, but I completed 10,000Kms only last week.

However, I can't say I entirely agree with GRV going by my experience.

Originally Posted by GRV

In Oct I was down with Dengue and drove the car after 4 weeks of bed rest. Feeling a bit weak, I realised how tuff is it to drive GV in morning traffic. The low end torque was clearly painful as it required constant shifting of gear that added to discomfort of my fever stricken weak body

This can happen with any car while recovering from illness, why blame the car now if it had not bothered you before? BTW, sorry to hear about the dengue. I remember cursing the Baleno in traffic after recovering from a week long fever.

Originally Posted by GRV

The Hard suspension was adding on to my woes and the black seat cover has dust spot all over (which refuse to go with normal cleaning).

I drive in pothole ridden roads all the times and the GV really smoothens the jolts for me. Ask anybody from Karnataka, they can tell how bads the roads are in my area. BTW, I have art-leather seat cover since day one.

Originally Posted by GRV

1. The car is good , a niche car but considering the price it is not value for money at all from practical angle

No CBU car is really VFM, is it only a question of affordability.

Originally Posted by GRV

1.1 No driving pleasure, underpowered and unrefined engine

Agree about the last two points, but first one is disputable. I derive my driving pleasure by driving on incredibly bad roads with impunity while other cars limp about. I have driven on same series of potholes repeatedly in Jeep, GV and Santro, and in comparison GV rocks. When I see bunch of Bikes/Autos/Cars/truck/buses limping about a series of potholes, I breeze next to them like I am on a smooth highway. That's driving pleasure for me.

Originally Posted by GRV

1.2 Gear change not smooth

I conceed this point, but it can be fixed, see my signature.

Originally Posted by GRV

1.3 Stiff ride (specially this rainy season, gurgaon roads were so bad)

This point I have to disagree. If GV had very soft ride, it would bottom out easily in every pothole. It is stiffer than cars, but just right for bad roads.

Originally Posted by GRV

1.5 Very basic interiors

Well, it is not a luxury car, but it doesn't look cheap either.

Originally Posted by GRV

1.6 Squeaks from atleast 4 places while driving

Well, that is true. Sometimes it goes away, and then comes back.

But consider the positives:
1) How many times you took it to M.A.S.S other than routine service to fix some niggles?
2) How many times you had to change a faulty part?
3) Have you spent on anything else apart from consumables?
4) Isn't it extremely cheap to maintain since it uses SX4 consumables?

I would still recommend GV to anybody who can afford it. Buy it if you want a great looking, reliable, easy and cheap to maintain, bad road handler. But do not buy the 2.0L GV if you want to drive aggressively on highway competing with cars, it doesn't have that kind of muscle. Also, don't buy it thinking you can do offroading with it.

[GRV]

Originally Posted by Guna

GRV
How is the fuel efficiency of your GV?

Hi

I got 9.6 KMPL in summer using A/C and now in winter I get 10 KMPL without A/C . This is average of daily office commute and weekly drive to delhi from gurgaon on highways and some long distance highway driving every 4-5 months

GRV

[aaggoswami]

Good review.

1) About the ride quality, check the tyre pressure and try reducing by a small margin.

2) Agree with poor engine performance. After buying such a car that happens to be CBU, a feeble 120 bhp motor for a heavy car is not a good idea.

On the performance mods stars with a better air filter, then spark plugs, in that sequence, but dont go for opening the engine.

3) GV has got what real offroaders have. And it looks like any Maruti car can take a lot of beating so you see alto. The 4X4 facalities become more useful for even more extreme off roading.

4) Another GV owner on T-BHP gets very good FE from his car.

[GRV]

Hi

My 1 year old vitara has done around 17,000 Km. It has started giving scraping sound when I apply brakes hard and suddenly. This happens only occasionally and not every time.

Wondering what could be the reason. Do not want to take it to service center without having some idea about fault otherwise service guy will simply fleece me

GRV

[vinaydas]

Originally Posted by GRV

Hi

My 1 year old vitara has done around 17,000 Km. It has started giving scraping sound when I apply brakes hard and suddenly. This happens only occasionally and not every time.

Wondering what could be the reason. Do not want to take it to service center without having some idea about fault otherwise service guy will simply fleece me

GRV

i think your brake pads have worn out.I used to get the same from my Camry then got it checked the service guys told me front wheel's pads have worn out..not sure about you but probably its that only.

[Takaya]

Hello,
First let me say that this is a very nice website, with lot of very nice pictures and vids and a bunch of information.
I am the happy owner of a New Grand Vitara 2.0L 16V and until now I haven’t got any problem and I am very satisfied of the car, as I have understood the 2.0L engine (J20A) of the GV in the 140bhp-configuration can do more than 300.000 km do you have more news on this? What is the maximum mileage that has been reached until now?
I have another quick question as I have seen several of you are very deep expert of the Grand Vitara, some days ago here or on youtube (I do not remember) I have seen a video with a Suzuki new grand vitara and another 4x4 (I presume it was a Land Rover Discovery) making donuts on the mud/wet grass but I was interest in see it once again but I am not able to find it anymore, I think presumably because the description was not in English and I thought it was done in India and there was no mention to the words "suzuki", "Grand Vitara" "off-road" or "mud"; if someone of you have seen it as well and can provide me the link I will really appreciate. In the meanwhile thanks again for all your posts, are very very nice and interesting.
Cheers.


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[anandpadhye]

Originally Posted by Takaya

I have another quick question as I have seen several of you are very deep expert of the Grand Vitara, some days ago here or on Youtube (I do not remember) I have seen a video with a Suzuki new grand vitara and another 4x4 (I presume it was a Land Rover Discovery) making donuts on the mud/wet grass but I was interest in see it once again but I am not able to find it anymore, I think presumably because the description was not in English and I thought it was done in India and there was no mention to the words "suzuki", "Grand Vitara" "off-road" or "mud"; if someone of you have seen it as well and can provide me the link I will really appreciate.

Hello,

Welcome to the forum.
The original name of Grand Vitara (at least in the Japanese market) is "Escudo". You can try "Escudo" to do a search for that video. Good luck!

BTW, what's the Fuel Efficiency of the GV you are experiencing?

[Takaya]

Hi,
the FE is around 10.9km/lt in summer (but without using A/C) and 10.5km/lt in Winter, I have got a bit of oil consumption on the first 6500km (I had to add 0.5kg of oil) but afterwards no issues at all.
The GV is excellent on the snow (I have the ESP and winter tires) and actually the fact that ESP is not completely deactivable (it is automatically reactivated when u pass the 35km/h) is a bit of a problem when you wanna have some fun...
On the research, I have tried "Escudo" and "XL7" as well but it did not work out, I think that the description is not in english, pity because the video was quite interesting as the driver was revving the 2.0L engine of the GV really out of the limit and I was wondering how the engine was reacting but I am not giving up...
Cheers.

[sudev]

@GRV: If you brought GV for daily commute no wonder you are disappointed. My offer for you to come along to Desert Storm is still open. Get there and see what your vehicle can do. I have not yet found a better price point + sturdy built + comfort package. See my thread on GV I have clocked 75k+ in one and half year. With reasonable FE of 9.5+