I had my Mom's Ignis AMT with me for 24 hours during which I got to experience the car in a variety of conditions. I have driven the car for cumulatively, say, a couple of hundred kilometers before this, though it has all been in city conditions and not on the highways. I havent been a fan of the Ignis from day 1 for the following reasons
- The steering feel is appalling to put it mildly. It is absolutely disconnected from the road and I am sure those big arcade car games I played as a kid had better connected steering systems than what the Ignis offers. Try taking a turn with some speed and the car's steering feels completely lost and you actually have to keep struggling with the car to get it to hold a planted line. Drive an under powered but well weighted Fiat Punto through a bunch of corners and then jump into the Ignis to do the same. You will pull your hair out in frustration at Maruti's lack of interest in dialling in any steering feel at all. If you want your parents to have a nice, easy to drive around 100% city runabout, the Ignis might be it. Oh wait, that's exactly the use case in my family as my Mom uses it to drive to the hospital and back every day. So its an easy car for her to drive but definitely not for me!
- Maruti's AMT gearbox has been touted as democratizing automatics for the masses. It's a pain to use if you drive with anything more than a very light foot. Try and press the accelerator and the car waits like its building up turbo lag and then suddenly shifts and picks up speed while rocking you in a boat like motion. You cannot drive this car with a heavy foot unless you want to throw up your last meal. There is only one way to drive this and not have your passengers throw you out of the car and that is to drive with a very light foot. If non enthusiasts drive this car and try an overtaking move, they will go back to the showroom and say, no AMT, only manual transmission!
- The braking is super spongy and lacks feel. I didnt mention about this to the SVC when they took the car in for service and they returned it without adjusting it.
- Build quality seems slightly iffy though it does feel better than the earlier generation Hyundai i10 that my Mom owned. That was a tin can superman if I ever saw one. Im glad we sold it. The news of the 3* safety rating for the Ignis seems about right. If it scored any higher, I would question both my ability to gauge a car's safety as well as the competency of the agency doing the testing!
- Economy grade tires that squeal for mercy if you prod the accelerator in a turn. The Bridgestone Ecopia tires embarrassingly scream like a teenager in a horror flick if you try to be mildly aggressive on the throttle if the car is parked on a slope.
- It feels expensive for what it offers. Yes, its a Nexa product and all that. But in terms of car per rupee, it doesnt feel like you get a lot.
My parents and I had to head to a town 60 kms away and my Mom suggested I take them in the Ignis instead of my Dad's Figo 1.2 or my Jazz CVT. I wasnt very keen on it due to my reservations about the car but we thought we should give it a try to see how it fares on slow highways and winding two laned Kerala roads.
One thing that I realized after topping up the car on the previous day is that the trip meter A and trip meter B do not have the mileage and drive time displays separately tagged to them. Since the two trip meters have never been used in our Ignis, I reset trip meter B but realized that the mileage figures and drive time had not changed. So I checked with a few fellow TBHPians who owned Marutis and was told that the similar readings in the Baleno were actually linked to trip meter A. So on the day of the drive I reset trip meter A and then found that the values for mileage and drive time were still not reset. They are not linked to A or B. You have to reset them individually. That doesnt really make sense to me. So each time you top up fuel, you have to reset your trip meter (A or B) and the mileage calculator and the drive time calculator separately. Odd!
In my Jazz, if I reset trip meter A, the other readings including mileage linked to it get reset. If I reset trip meter B, the reading associated with B get reset. Hence the mileage calculation in A will be different from B, if they were reset at different times.
Since my Mom gets motion sickness if we are in the ghats, I had to drive slowly irrespective of which car we had taken. Add to this, the Ignis AMTs bobbing gearbox and I had to be feather light on the throttle through the drive. The super spongy braking was annoying and since my Mom is used to the current setup I didnt ask Maruti to change it at the last service. After talking to my Mom about it during the trip, she agreed it could be better and asked me to talk to the SVC guys to adjust it to give a more linear feel.
Luckily we were reaching our destination early and the traffic we encountered was very relaxed and was probably an indication of the pace of this part of the state. So there were no emergency braking scenarios or too many overtaking moves that we had to pull off. When we reached our destination, I was astounded to see the display indicating a mileage of 19.6 kmpl! Mind you, this wasnt some arrow straight boring road that we had driven through. Surely the car was being far too optimistic I said to myself while sharing the following picture with some fellow TBHPians.
On the way back, we had to turn up the AC through the drive and there was more traffic to contend with. Again, I had to keep a very gentle foot on the throttle. On some bumpy sections, I had to slow down a bit as the car doesnt swallow bad roads like say a Fiat Punto and makes the occupants feel uncomfortable. We encountered a lot more traffic as well so there was an impact on the mileage once we got back into the city. The music system was playing at a low volume and is fine for basic use or listening to the radio. The display is archaic and makes scrolling through albums to find songs a real pain. You are better off just playing the music and letting the songs play one by one. Overall my parents were quite comfortable with the car journey and thanks to my saint like self control over the throttle, we avoided the head bobbing all day. Sure, we could have taken the competent and spacious Jazz instead and done the same trip a lot faster without having to worry about the the ride quality or the puke inducing AMT gearbox but my parents were finally happy that there is a car that makes me drive slower (
and a lot closer to their speeds!). The Ignis AMT has successfully tamed me as a driver
I topped up the car from the same IOCL petrol bunk as I had done the previous day and calculated the mileage. A quite surprising 17.17 kmpl from the Ignis AMT which was very impressive! I cant remember the last time the Jazz gave me such figures though to be fair, I havent babied the Honda Jazz with a similar driving style.
After 150 kms in 24 hours, I still dont like the little Maruti. I really cant think of doing the 550 km drive from Cochin to Bangalore in this car on those wide 6 lane highways as the gearbox would drive me insane. I cant even think of taking it to say Valparai which has twisties in plenty because the wonky steering will make me want to leave the car there and trek back home. I really cant think of using it in the city because I cant overtake anybody without the slow AMT making me regret it. But that's me. My Mom seems to like her Ignis AMT and honestly, thats all that matters!