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-   -   2020 Tata Harrier Automatic : Official Review (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/official-new-car-reviews/225881-2020-tata-harrier-automatic-official-review-107.html)

First of all, I would like to thank the moderators for approving my membership. I came across Team-BHP 12 months ago when a friend of mine recommended me to checkout this platform to get unbiased reviews of cars. Needless to say, the views shared by various members in the forum helped me purchase my car 12 months ago. Till date, I have done close to 24k KMS on my TANK and this is my ownership thread. I am still a novice when it comes to understanding the technology and mechanics behind these beautiful machines. Hence, a lot of the language used will be very layman-ish. Although, I am learning quick thanks to this Forum.

Little bit about me first

I work for a Software company based out of Bangalore. I was in Sales and used to do lot of plain-hopping during the weekdays meeting customers. On the weekends, I used to come back to Bangalore and hit the road on my Yamaha FZS 150cc bike. My wildest ride with it was a 3-day 1700 KM drive from Bangalore - Kanyakumari - Rameshwaram - Bangalore. The ride surely hurt by butt but it was worth it. Beginning of 2020, I moved into a new role in my company that does not require me to travel anymore. I was tired of the airport trips and it was impacting my health. And then Covid happened. I moved back to my hometown in Andhra Pradesh. I got married during the first Covid wave. Post marriage, we waited for things to cool out for an year in our hometown before returning to Bangalore. During this 1 year, I learnt car driving. My Father-in-law had a 2008 Diesel Swift VDI. I learnt driving on it and have done few 400 kms+ drives on it as well between Hyderabad and my hometown. Me and my wife finally moved to Bangalore in June 2021. I spent couple of months settling in and setting up a new house with all the necessary stuff. With things easing up with Covid, I wanted to travel again. Only this time, I won't be able alone. I will be travelling with my wife. So, our search began for a new car. We have considered and test driven several cars starting from Swift to XUV700. It took us a while to figure out our key requirements as stated below:

• Large bootspace to carry stuff from the occasional trips from hometown to Bangalore

• An SUV - We felt an SUV would give us better highway driving experience and overall better feeling of safety

• Decently powered car to sail us smoothly on the travels through different terrains

• Sunroof is must for the wife. A part of me also wanted it.

• A diesel car with an auto gearbox

• A proper 5-seater. When 3 people are sitting the back row, they should not feel congested. We did not need a 7-seater.

• Top model preferably. Get as many features as possible from the OEM itself. I am not a big fan of opening up the car outside of the OEM premises.

Purchase Experience

My purchase experience was good with KHT Mahadevapura, Bangalore. Our Sales Advisor was a genuine and gave us multiple test drives on request. He also did not push us to buy any extra stuff. We booked Tata Harrier 2021 XZA+ Orcus White colour. The vehicle was delivered to us in 3 weeks. We felt Tata could have provided a cake at the time of delivery considering we are buying a vehicle worth 25lacs. Anyways, we did not allow that to shadow our excitement. We took the car for Puja and left immediately for Mysore that night and took it out for a ride to Bandipur forest the next day. The adventure & trips begin:)

Things I like about this car

• Highway driving manners - The car feels stable and sorted at high speeds. I am sedate cruiser (although, I am game for an odd outburst to overtake an irritating bus or car). The car almost effortlessly reaches 80-100 KMPH speeds and such speeds are not felt in the cabin. It "feels" like you doing 40-50 KMPH whilst you are actually at 80-100KMPH.

• Automatic Transmission - Thank God, I purchased the Auto Transmission. It takes the weight off the car while driving in the crazy Bangalore traffic and giving you the peace of mind of not having to constantly engage the clutch and gearbox on the Ghats. I get to focus more on the road and enjoy the scenery.

• Strong build quality - It took us a month to able to close the doors in one-go. You can certainly feel that this is an heavy car when Tata makes you lift their Bonnet (without hydraulics) and the boot (without electronics). Overall, the body structure itself feels very strong.

• Audio System Quality - I am a bass lover. Not a heart-thumping Bass, but in moderate amounts. The Infinity system by JBL is perfect. The audio quality & clarity is great and I get sufficient Bass without stretching the volume a lot. A good music system enhances your long-drive experience and slow moving Bangalore traffic trips.

• Satisfactory Mileage - Considering that I am driving an heavy car, with a 1966cc engine and an auto-transmission, I am very happy with my mileage. I get somewhere around 10KMPL in Bangalore city traffic and 14-16KMPL on Highways. If you have the patience to cruise at 80-90KMPH with Eco mode on an highway, you can get even insane mileage numbers.

• A lot of power in the tank - The car does not feel underpowered at all. I takes all types of tricky situations in its stride - Ghat roads, Quick overatakes on busy 2-lane roads without dividers. Mind you, this is all without engaging the Sports Mode. Sports Mode transforms this into a different level beast.

• Stunning Looks - This car turns heads. Mine is Ocrus White edition. I am not a big fan of the rear. Of course, several people prefer the Dark Edition. We preferred White as we did not want to invest a lot into Maintenance. Moreover, I like it when White cars are soiled.

What can be better

• Behold, another rant about the infamous Tata Harrier Infotainment system. A lot has been written about it already. Let me add my own thoughts. First of all, it hangs up on you on long travels. Just restarting the infotainment system by pressing both the volume and radio tuner knobs solves this. Second thing is the under-utilisation of the screen space when connected to Android Auto or Apple Carplay. Nearly 30% of the screen space is not used. This is poor design by Tata. Third, the screen resolution itself seems to be very poor when connected to Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. Fourth, Google Maps doesn't play well with Apple Carplay. When you are in no-network location, the navigation does not update the location (even though I have the map downloaded offline in Google Maps). Moreover, you are unable to cast the turn-by-turn navigation guidelines on to your MID. The solution that I found for this - I purchased a cheap Android phone for the Car. I use it for Navigation & Music. This solves the issues with Apple Carplay.

• Stock headlights offer poor visibility. You would realise this just in a single night drive after you purchase the vehicle. Prepare yourself to upgrade.

• Essential safety features missing - I believe TPMS is as important as an Airbag in your car. While the Airbag will protect you when an accident happens, TPMS will alert you to get out of one. Tata should be providing TPMS in their cars. I purchased Sensairy Internal TPMS and got it installed from Tyre Empire. For a car of this size, I believe a 360 degree camera would also help manoeuvre it in some tricky narrow roads. I had my heart in mouth when I drove this car in the narrow lanes leading up to Commercial Street in Bangalore(Google Maps played smart by showing up shortest path through these lanes).

• Turn indicator sensitivity - It is a bit irritating. The indicator automatically neutralises even for a slightest hint of turn to the opposite side.

• No options for an AWD or 4x4 - when you look at the products Mahindra is rolling out, I wish Harrier offered at least an AWD variant. It just gives that additional level confidence when you might run into some tricky situations

• Service Centers - Enough has been said about the hit-and-miss Service experience with Tata. A new problem is on the horizon now. I am not sure if Tata has ramped up their service network enough to scale with their sales volumes. They are selling a lot of cars and this is slowly starting to choke their service centers. You need to plan well ahead for getting your scheduled services done. Considering that the scheduled services are once every 7.5k KMS, it is a major hassle.

Few Pics of the car from its travels


Other cars considered and the reasons for rejection

• XUV700 - Our Test Drive car had niggles. Reverse parking camera did not turn on when the reverse gear was engaged. Drive modes did not engage. Infotainment system hung up during the Test Drive. This left an impression that this is a Work-In-Progress product. Moreover, the waiting period was a huge turn-off. We wanted the car immediately so that we can hit the road. :)

• MG Hector - We wanted to book a top-model and we wanted Diesel considering the amount of travel we do. We wanted an Auto Gearbox. Hector did not have Diesel option. Their top model petrol automatic came with CVT gearbox which was not fun to drive for me. I was also terrified by looking at some people reporting 6-8 KMPL mileage in Bangalore city driving conditions.

• Tata Safari - We needed a 5-seater. I did not like the rear of Safari and felt like it is a more bulkier car and would be difficult to drive in Bangalore Traffic.

Signing off for now.

I am glad to be part of this forum and will be updating this thread with my ownership experience on an ongoing basis and also look forwarding to jotting down several travelogues.

Nice review and welcome to the forum and Bengaluru. Karnataka is a land of many sights and some of us locals ourselves have not seen all. Waiting for the travelogues of your trips.

A very nice car and a very nice color too. I agree with the TPMS part. Hope you have many years of fun with the car!

Hello,

Thank you for the wonderful write up. Apart from the infotainment unit , were there any niggles or rattles that you had faced? Thanks!

Welcome to T-BHP and congratulations on joining the TANK CLUB. Great, crisp write-up.

Please share your experience/review of the TPMS (I just ordered the JK Tyre Treel TPMS units).

Wishing you many happy miles with the TANK.

My break was making a weird sound at low speeds. I have shown it during both first and second service. Both the times, they mentioned that they fixed. I still hear some noise and I ignore it. Apart from that, I don't have any major issues other than the points I shared earlier.

Several Harrier owners purchased JK Tyre TPMS. Its a value for money unit. I purchased SensAiry internal TPMS. Its a bit on the expensive side but it does the job well. They also provide an Android APK which allows me to display the readings on on the Infotainment screen through Android Auto. I installed this app on the Android phone I always keep in the car.

Changed from 3M nomads to 7d mats. Nomad was good but there was slippage. Bought the luxury mats and the manufacturer is saying that this is imported material, no idea but the material looks sturdier than other 7d mats. It’s scratch proof and water resistant

We have a Feb 2020 BS4 Harrier which we love dearly and has been niggle free so far, mostly used by my father.
6-7 months ago, he got transferred to a new place where his office is really close and speed reached is also quite low.
Since then, we have been getting following error frequently (image attached). The service centre says 'regen' is required and they do the regen and clear the error code but within a week or two, the error comes back again (this whole cycle has happened at least 5 times till now and we are fed up). This error disables the drive modes (eco, city, sport) and the esp modes (wet, rock etc.) as well.
The issue is we also do quite long drives every month or so and due to the error, acceleration takes a hit and it feels like driving a truck!
The service centre guy advised to drive 20-30 kms at high rpm to clear the code but recently two days back I drove the entire Yamuna expressway on 4th gear 100-110kmph but the regen error did not go away.:sadface

I was of the belief that such problems are a thing of BS6 diesels and BS4 diesels are free from this. Is there any solution or is this an error particular to our Harrier?

This looks like a brake switch issue which was common in BS4 Harriers. Which service center is this which did a regen in a BS4 car?

Thank you for your suggestions and advise. Yes, I will go ahead with OSRAM Nightbreakers for the High beam on my Harrier. The Low beams, as have already mentioned, are now running OSRAM HIDs and are working great.

Thank you to all the others in the following posts for the clarifications.
This is great.

First few times done at Sagar Motors, Ghaziabad and the last time got it done at Chandigarh.
The SC guys say that due to low running, soot gets deposited which needs to be burned.
All of them connect the laptop and the car is revved till 2500-3000rpm at stationary for 25-30mins. However, what I don't understand is that why the errors did not go away when I drove on Yamuna expressway at 4th gear.

In case you have not purchased a vehicle yet, the Harrier AT is really good. I drove my cousin's Harrier and it was so much fun. It eats up bad roads easily. The SUV feels like a car while maneuvering. The acceleration in sports mode pushes you back in the seat. The road presence is amazing. Feels like a premium vehicle after 1.5 years if maintained well. Sound system is decent. My cousin has developed a good relationship with his A.S.S. His vehicle gets maintained well and he is happy with the result. On the downside, there is a left pull while accelerating and you will get used to this over time. There are slight panel gaps due to inconsistent built quality which would have reduced by now as the workers get more experienced. All these things are livable and become irrelevant once you have purchased the vehicle as its a gem to drive and will make you happy. The car is like its on rails at high speeds. Cousin takes many long drives and never feels tired as the ride quality is plush and the vehicle eats up miles.
You can test drive the safari and see if you feel this way and if it makes you happy, you can go for this one.

Another option to consider is Xuv 700 as many variants are available with relatively lower waiting period. Both petrol and diesel engines are a gem and overall the vehicle is extremely well made. The lack of availability also gives this vehicle a higher desirability factor. The quality and design are much ahead compared to Safari or Harrier. You are confused as you can't go wrong with either vehicle. Happy hunting!!

On the screen I see other warnings too. Do these go away or do the other warning lights remain.

I have a Safari which used to show a HDC error and some warnings. When I took it to the service center it turned out to be rats had eaten through a lot of wires and they replaced the wiring for it to go away. Hope this helps

Since rat problem has been mentioned I would like to tell you from my personal experience that it is rampant and very important for at least the new car owners to take some preventive actions.
I bought the new Harrier XZA and after 3 weeks only I found the cabin was stinking badly. When I took the car to SC, not knowing what could have caused it, they immediately identified as a rat getting decayed inside. As per the SA, the new wires and plastic smell attracts the rodents and they nibble on the wires.
Was told that it might take couple of days for them to find the dead rat as it could be anywhere and luckily they found it at the gear change section at the front and I was charged around 3200/ for the same. They said if they had to remove the airbags and front panel the charges would have been additional 5.5K :O

I was advised by SA to get the wax polish done for underside which will subside the smell of the plastic but I did online search and found that peppermint oil mixed with water, spray works as a deterrent and is much effective.

Hi All Owners of Harriers, can you give me a firm advice as my younger brother has paid the booking amount for the top end version of Harriers (27L OTR Mumbai) and its from the newly opened dealership at Vikhroli. Is this car for the prices stated a GO or NO GO ? I would appreciate if actual owners can comment too.