Since I'm a newbie, I don't have the privileges yet to post an all new ownership review thread, and therefore I would like to pen my thoughts here as a small summary for all the members who may be considering purchasing the Hexa.
Hexa XT 4x2 7-seater, 2500+kms and 24 days on..
My dad took delivery of the car on March 4th and he hadn't even test driven the manual variant. I had extensively driven the automatic and he had tried the automatic a few days before confirming the payment of the manual variant as well and many of you may now wonder why we chose the manual over the auto. First of all, the Hexa was quite over budget for us and the automatic was even more expensive (possibly also in the long run with maintenance for the gearbox). Moreover, the manual XT has a lot of safety features (ESP, HDC, traction control, rollover mitigation), apart from the fact that the two primary drivers of the car, my dad and I both love manual gearboxes and the control they give.
So the day after he got the car, he came over to my college (100 kms from Thrissur, Kerala, where we live). The car was brand new with just a kilometer or two on the odo. It had been delivered straight from Pune before being given to us.
(Yes, it has a Team-BHP sticker on it

)
Last week, I got the experience of driving the Hexa through varied conditions during a couple of trips we undertook, first from Thrissur to Kannur (around 220 kms), then from Thrissur to Trivandrum and Kanyakumari (total trip length of around 900 kms). The roads involved a few twisties and some pretty bad and rough stretches. We kept to the recommended RPM and speed limits for the run-in period, till 1500-1800 kms before we really started to open up the engine gradually. All in all, it was a good 2500 kms covered in barely 20 days, quite taxing for a new vehicle, I'd say. We came away suitably impressed. Here are 4 main points I'd like to share :
1. The ride quality is impeccable. The bad stretches of road that I talked about, were dealt with arrogance from the large wheels and perfectly tuned suspension. It does its job quietly. Overall comfort levels are at par with vehicles several classes above it. The seats are perfectly suited for people like me and my dad, both of us who are above 6 feet tall. This is one of those rare cars where I don't have to contort my body to weird postures to sit comfortably or for ingress or egress. The family is mighty impressed with this particular aspect. The third row is not particularly comfortable for me (I'm 6'2", way above average). I had to sit sideways to fit properly. But the third row seat is superb and well cushioned and anyone under 6 feet will feel right at home.
2. The handling makes it feel like a much smaller car. The Hexa took on some twisty sections of road between Thrissur and Kannur with aplomb. There was minimal body roll and the steering felt direct, if a little low on feel compared to the mind-bendingly telepathic steering on the Fiat Punto. It did feel well weighted however and very confidence inspiring. The car begs you to push a bit harder into the corners and this is not what I was expecting to say of a 2.1 ton ladder-framed behemoth. Driving this massive thing in the city too was rather easy, especially considering the fact that Kerala's towns and cities have absolutely terribly designed narrow roads and lots of people moving zig-zag without knowing any traffic rules.
3. The Varicor 400 engine is an absolute gem. At idle, it sounds even quieter than the 1.3 MultiJet that we had in our previous car, a 2010 model Fiat Punto. Inside the cabin, the engine is quite commendably silent at idle and gives a nice throaty roar when revved hard. Give it a little beans and the engine wakes up after 1500 rpm and gives you all that 400 nm torque in one instant. Of course, there is turbo-lag as is expected from such a large turbo but you'll soon learn to recalibrate your driving style so as to keep the motor at the peak of its torque curve. One thing that really made me smile was how this engine pulled in 5th and 6th gears at around 70 kmph on the incline of a highway flyover. I was doing 70 on the climb and flooring the throttle brought the engine up to its turbo zone and it kept pulling like a locomotive. That feeling of torque is immensely satisfying. Fuel efficiency numbers cannot be discussed with complete certainty yet, but we're averaging around 14 kmpl with a mix of city and highway driving. The gearbox is a bit notchy like what everyone has said, but this is not a deal-breaker at all. The clutch is a bit springy and both my dad and I managed to stall it a considerable number of times. One needs to adjust their driving style in this regard.
4. Tata has massively improved in the after-sales department. One unfortunate thing that happened to our car soon after delivery was that the Harman infotainment system stopped working completely. It would show a blank white screen which would flash in quick succession five times and then go dead, only to repeat the same thing again. Worried, the next day we took it to the local Tata dealer, Hyson Motors where they first tried reflashing the firmware on the ICE unit, but to no avail. Then they contacted Tata at Pune, who directed technicians from Harman at Cochin to visit the service center at Thrissur to get the issue sorted. They brought a new head unit which they exchanged for the one in our car. Then, they reflashed the software and all was fine. The car was ready by 7 PM that day. The service head at Hyson told us that Tata was very proactive and they got calls right from HQ (where they were also trying to recreate the problem simultaneously), and they even called asking to confirm if the Harman guys had turned up yet. This reaffirms our faith in purchasing our second Tata (first was a 2004 model Indica V2 DLX).
To conclude this short summary, we've thoroughly enjoyed the car so far. It is a solid piece of engineering that has a lot of attention to detail throughout. Ergonomics are spot on, in our case anyway, comfort levels are off the charts and drivability is immense. We love it.
P.S. I did read a lot of posts on how the third row seats cannot be folded flat. Let me assure you that this is not at all a problem if you are planning to haul a lot of luggage as we did over the course of the week. We had a huge amount of bags and suitcases that filled up the boot area with the third seat folded and not a single piece moved around or rested against the boot door due to the angle of the third row seat. Also, consider the fact that we drove over some pretty bad patches of road at the same time.