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Tiago - The driver in TATA's growth story so far,




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A review on my ten month old(6,000 kms) Tiago xz(P), hoping it helps somebody who is unsure about the car.

In one line, its been reliable, and does the job, but annoying, really, really annoying.

Long review, well, what ever I've experienced in little over 10 months with the vehicle.

1) Delivery experience
- I could be a one off case, but it was bad for me. Buying a new car is a special time and they ruined it. They even tried to make it better by gifting me a car vacuum cleaner later on, but the damage was done. I'm not going to elaborate the whole experience, but one thing that really pushed all my buttons simultaneously was when I asked the SA, on the day of delivery, about how to connect my phone to the car's music system, and she points at the Connectnext manual and says, "it's in here, read it".Didn't even have the customary photo that day. This was after a bunch of screw ups, and decided to take the high road and be nice to them. The glorious dealer was Concorde Dairy circle.
Also, I payed to get the car in November but got it only in December. December cars carried a free insurance offer which was not given to me. One would expect a decent sales person to communicate that to a annoyed customer to pacify them, they didn't. Realised it only after I got the. They did refund some of that money after I complained to the customer care.But why would you over charge in the first place?

2) Power
-Its powerful enough for the city.
-Keeps up with the highway traffic. I mean, it can't hold a flame to an angry Skoda or anything bigger but can keep up with the 90-120kmph crowd, and is pretty surefooted until around 120-130kmph.
-It just doesn't pull uphill - lots of time spent in thesecond gear when climbing, 1st sometimes, especially when fully loaded. I'm from a hill station so makes this extra disappointing. On our way back from our tea plantation, I couldn't over take my dad in a 26 year old MG 410! I really, really tried. I had four people on board and the Gypsy only had two, but still.

2)Handling
Never had issue with the handling. Pretty good around corners.

3) Mileage
Average, my second hand i10 gave me slightly better figures under similar usage.

4)Comfort
Pretty neat.

5)Fasttag
Again, could be a one-off but i'm yet to receive it! Ten months! Been after them for over two weeks now, Concorde just doesn't take customers seriously. Super annoying, insulting even the way they refuse to reply.

6)Shaky driver seat.
Been shaking since the first month. Got it "fixed" the first time, shaking started again in a couple of months. The last time I visited the service center they did escalate it, and told be I'll get a reply in 7-8 days. Been 15 days since, I'm still to hear from them.

7) Steering wheel is tilted to the left a tiny bit.
Its not a big deal but its annoying to have that in a new car. Just read that Madhus can help, will make time to visit them.

8)Headlights
Nope. Nope. Nope. In a rainy night in the hills a cheap LED torch would have been better. I had to drive the car with power of prayers not eye sight. Whats annoying is that there is no alternative that TATA provides. I even offered to pay the full price for the Tigor set up but the service center vehemently refused, and told me horror stories about customers who upgraded their headlights. Any suggestions?

9) Brakes
Solid. Have done the emergency braking a few times. Car holds its ground and stops within a decent distance. But it developed squeaks a couple of times, got it cleaned and they stopped. The last time I got it cleaned, the service adviser said it had a bit of rust? It didn't really click me until I reached home, not sure if "rust" should be there. suggestions please.

10)Music system
Sweeetttttt. Had a colleague who would travel back with me just so he could listen to his music in my car. His other option was a colleague with a Duster.

11)Other Niggles
The fuel filler lid and the boot refused to open, on different occasions. These are small things but I'm forced to travel to the service center each time, and that is colossal waste of time. The time the fuel filler lid refused to open, I called the 24/7 assistance who sent a gem. He told me he had to tear the carpet(after he created a smaller tear with his fingers), he was confident that the service center guys could "stitch it back up". While controlling my urge to run him over, politely declined, and visited the service center next morning. They oped it with a pen and generously sprayed it with WD40. I could have done the same but I was afraid I might damage something, being a new car an all(one month old then). The bigger irritation was that it was the day of my first anniversary and I was supposed to leave to Pondicherry early that day. I left Dairy circle at 10 AM, guess when I reached Hosur? Ruined the whole day.

12) 3M Inside TASS
Avoid them like the plague. 3Ms outside are they way to go if you feel the need.

Over all the car is good, but niggles is the middle name, and dealing with the guys selling the thing is a huge pain.
If you have the patience to deal with the niggles and the gems they have employed go for it, else buy a Maruti or a Hyundai. Service center does what it can, may need a bit more polishing when it comes to communicating with customers, but over all good. Being a management guy myself, I mite be a little too pedantic about how one deals with a customer.
I feel TATA's heart is in the right place but they have not been able to fix gaps in their organisation. Some thing just can't be repaired, needs to be replaced. Hope they understand that soon.

I'm pretty sure JTP versions would be a Hoot and a half, I personally, would not buy another TATA in the near future. Maybe they need a few more years to fix these gaps.

Hope this was of some use.

New Tata Tiago Top of the line variant coming in with new features.


Source

Tiago is really value for money and a family member wishes to pick it up. My only concern is the engine and reliability. Any feedback from long term owner of the Tiago ?

After more than 14 months and 30K kms of ownership I can be proud of my choice. No issues at all till date. Can recommend without any hitch. You can go ahead.

The door handles seem to be black, like for lower variants. There is a black sticker/vinyl on the C-pillar like in the newly launched Tiago NRG. I do hope that they bring in more than just the new alloys and Tigor's headlamps with this update. Let's keep the fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Thank you for the detailed review. As a year old owner of a Tiago XZ petrol, i concur with several of the points you made. Power, stability and handling is good for city use and occasional expressway driving. I tested the speed handing by driving on the ORR expressway with no traffic till a little over 120km/h and the handling was rock steady. It take time to build up speed but then for a family user like me, i do not need the speed these days. So i am fine with it. Space and seating comfort is good for city use. Boot take a good amount of shopping bags.
(Side note: i got a speeding ticket for driving at that speed! So guys, I did the speed test for you so that you need not test the speed and get speeding tickets later! stupid: Just kidding. Don't over-speed guys!).



Little niggles are definitely there. The stuck fuel lid was bugging me for months till a petrol pump attendant told to spray WD40. I dislike the weak fog lights (main lights are good for city use). The engine sounds are quite audible and there are vibrations present. Millage has been disappointing for me as well. My 10 year old i10 was giving similar millage.



But on the whole, i think it is a good Value for Money car. This is my 3rd Tata car. in 20 years. Having owned an i10 and Grand i10, I can say the Hyundai cars are much easier to drive with smoother engine performance, but I still love the overall comfort i feel when driving the Tiago.



And yes, i too did not get FastTag with the car. But then i have not asked for it as i rarely go out of the city.

With Santro out in the market, I hope Tiago is able to sustain the volumes. It seems to tick all the right boxes.

I drove the Tiago AMT , it was refined and felt less jerky than celerio.

The celerio that belongs to my uncle got progressively worse after a few months, its quite jerky.

How is Tiago AMT after some extensive usage?

Headlamps are really bad in tiago. I have my personal bad experiences as well and the fog lamps are just sitting there for the sake of having it in there and is of no use. Both headlamps and fog light do not lit up the road ahead sufficiently.
Many BHPians I know have switched to a higher power or LED lamps (both headlights and fog). This post could help you. Has details of procurement and pictures of beam after installation.
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/offic...ml#post4339566

-UB

I've made a small ownership review video of the new TATA Tiago XZA Automatic. TATA have made some silent and serious updates on the Tiago which makes it truly best in it's segment now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDjR0EOc6jA

The car is excellent compared to it's competitor's like Celerio and Wagon R. It takes the fight even up to the mighty Grand i10.
There is a big BUT however, if any of you are following my vlog's you'll know I'm totally unhappy with the way the AMT gearbox responds. It's in one word RUBBISH !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6owGg98ywk

With AC ON this engine is struggling a lot. It just can not make it's mind on which gear to select on an incline. Sometimes there are chances for it to roll back as well. This is very dangerous for an inexperienced or lady driver as they just can not react on time to prevent an accident from occurring.

Another issue, is the inconsistent throttle response. You just can not predict what the engine will do for any kind of throttle response. Sometimes it just surges ahead fast while at other times it's just dead asleep even at 100% throttle. Utterly rubbish gearbox.

In short, Tiago does a lot of things very very good, like ride quality, interiors and that amazing Harman ICE. You can even excuse TATA for omitting some nice new features, but you just can't forgive when the car fails in performing it's main function, which is providing a convenient drive for it's owner.

The manual gearbox might not have these issues because you can control the gear and accelerator, but the AMT is totally useless.

Also the fuel economy is very bad, I'm getting only around 10 Kmpl.


Summary :

Positives :

Excellent ride quality
Very good NVH levels.
Engine refinement very good.
Interiors feel very premium.
2+2 Extended warranty along with P2P.
Excellent Harman Music system.
Good seats and adequately powered engine.
Good paint quality.

Negatives:

Lethargic and confused AMT gearbox.
No rear camera nor touch screen audio system.
TATA brand name.
Removal of backlit switches and Boot lid light.
Low fuel Mileage (100% city driving) 10 Kmpl.

CONCLUSION:

Just avoid all AMT gearbox cars. They are all rubbish, they don't provide any convenience whatsoever.

If you want, just purchase the Grand i10 as it does not suffer like this and fuel mileage is also similar to this. It also has 4 cylinders.

Or just get the new Santro. Which is also a 4 cylinder and surely is better than Tiago in all the departments, except loosing out on some space.

Which is why I have swapped to the Tigor’s projector unit. Incredible improvement compared to the stock tiago’s Unit.

Was thinking of writing about this (ie. considering replacing headlamps with Tigor's units) and you have actually done it already! Kudos! :thumbs up
After personally observing inadequate lighting on our earlier Indica and Safari, and finding considerable improvements post our upgrade to the eCS and Storme models, had realized that it was all to do with "spread" in the light. Having separate reflectors for low beam and high beam considerably improves the throw of light on the road.
The earlier single reflector headlamps left a void in between the L and R headlamp beams (I mean the throw on the road ahead), which fills up effectively in the 2 reflector design, when both the H and L beams are turned on.
Owners doing night drives on highways can consider switching to the dual reflector headlamps. No bulb upgrades (to higher wattage) required too. In fact, Storme has 55w bulbs for both H and L and does the "illuminating" job very well! :)
Cheers.

I do come across situations like you mentioned, for example when exiting from a basement parking in my NANO AMT. In such situations I usually move the gear lever to manual mode so as to prevent the transmission from shifting into second in the middle of the climb. Also shifting into manual model makes the gear box less confused and delivers power quickly without any lag from the throttle.

All AMTs with a poor low end torque suffer in these situations and I found that vehicles like Nexon, Duster with bigger engines perform better when dealing with stop go traffic on inclines.

But it's always better to use the handbrake along with manual mode to take of in a smooth manner on steep inclines, and also to save the clutch from excessive wear. The handbrake switch is linked to the TCU and it disengages the clutch when in use.

Am confused. One side you say you love the car and the other you ask people to buy I10 or Santro?



I do understand your woes with AMT but several members on forum are quite happy with it and even getting 12-13 kpl mileage. Maybe AMT needs adjusting driving style.

When did I say I love the Tiago ? The Tiago is a good car in many departments, but it's let down by the AMT gearbox. Experienced drivers can definitely get over it and drivers just jumping from a manual gearbox car might not have an issue.

But when you've driven other gearboxes or if you're a woman, you'll be disappointed for sure.