[CircleOfLife]

Originally Posted by Kosfactor

I have seen several folks doing full body PPF for this class of vehicles. I do not think it is necessary because its much cheaper to repaint a panel when there is a scratch.

This is a point driven in VID post also. Unless one has a OCD of keeping their vehicle in very good condition over a long period and ready to invest some time effort then best is to skip ceramic & invest the same money in PPF for high impact areas.

With a good quality PPF it would protect against minor impacts. Recent experience was driving in a bumper to bumper traffic and maintaining sufficient distance at the front. Suddenly a thud from behind & heat skips a beat, knew 2 wheeler has touched the bumper. Got down right at the spot to asses & PPF saved it from scratches and paint etching if any. Harder impact would have definitely cause more damage both to PPF & bumper. Worth noting was reaction of the 2 wheeler "Traffic mein aisa hota rehta hein ignore karo". Not to belittle in any respect but if there was a major impact the cost of repair would have been half the entire value of scooter. We can't always avoid such incidents as we consciously lack discipline by virtue.

Prevention is always better than cure, hence if budget permits then recommend PPF on high impact areas only else just keep the same money aside keep earning interest & utilize for any repairs or upgrades in future.

[Rjeevan]

Can anybody confirm if 2022 models(style) have started arriving in showrooms? My SA seems to get active only towards month-end to bump up his sales. I'm planning to switch the dealer.

[Aviator_guy]

Seeing so many posts about pros and cons of PPF, here is one related post about not so good experience..
https://www.team-bhp.com/news/horrib...ndai-i20-elite

[Kosfactor]

Originally Posted by CircleOfLife

Prevention is always better than cure, hence if budget permits then recommend PPF on high impact areas only else just keep the same money aside keep earning interest & utilize for any repairs or upgrades in future.

It costs under 3K to repaint a bumper for normal vehicles (ironic enough that a bumper needs protection), anyhow if that scooter was a little faster as in your case it would have cracked the bumper itself, so there is that.

VAG cars have fairly durable body parts and very durable paint, it can withstand good amount of abuse. So one may as well use the money for petrol because this is supposed to be the more driver focused of the small crossovers.

[thanixravindran]

All - My first post (excluding the introduction) in Team BHP. I got the delivery of 2022 Kushaq 1.0 TSI Ambition MT (The now infamous manual ORVM model) in Chennai last Thursday.

I was offered 2021 model with good discounts when I was booking but the color choice of my family (Tornado Red) is not available. So got the 2022 Jan produced unit.

Though I know the Electric folding mirror deletion before PDI/payment, I was okay to proceed since I don't fold the mirrors and hence is not a deal breaker for me.

I will post the details and first impressions later but leave this post now with the picture of the car

[CircleOfLife]

Originally Posted by Kosfactor

It costs under 3K to repaint a bumper for normal vehicles (ironic enough that a bumper needs protection), anyhow if that scooter was a little faster as in your case it would have cracked the bumper itself, so there is that.

VAG cars have fairly durable body parts and very durable paint, it can withstand good amount of abuse. So one may as well use the money for petrol because this is supposed to be the more driver focused of the small crossovers.

3k painting for bumper at VW or Skoda service center? Unless the cost has significantly been reduced in past 1 year, i haven't received such low numbers quotes for Vento from service center. Over a period of time plastic quality has significantly gone down. Driving factors are localization & lowering TCO. Have owned 5 VAG cars in a decade, quality compared to initial batch of cars along current CKD & then you peg them against last updated vento or rapid there is a lot of difference. Plastic of Kushaq felt tad more lower to rapid or vento. Bumper literally cracked on last vento with minor impact and pervious cars had survived far worse scenarios with just scratches.

[TJ02]

Originally Posted by CircleOfLife

3k painting for bumper at VW or Skoda service center? Unless the cost has significantly been reduced in past 1 year, i haven't received such low numbers quotes for Vento from service center. Over a period of time plastic quality has significantly gone down. Driving factors are localization & lowering TCO. Have owned 5 VAG cars in a decade, quality compared to initial batch of cars along current CKD & then you peg them against last updated vento or rapid there is a lot of difference. Plastic of Kushaq felt tad more lower to rapid or vento. Bumper literally cracked on last vento with minor impact and pervious cars had survived far worse scenarios with just scratches.

I just paid close to 4.5k for my polo bumper repaint a couple of months back. The whole bumper was replaced along with paint job for 7.5k.

[sid2017]

Finally, my Tornado Red 1.5 DSG Style 6 AirBags was delivered on last Thursday.



Why Red ?
My three and half year old son said he will only sit in Red Car. Now that the color was decided , our search for new car started March 2021.

Why Automatic?
I have had a 8 Year old Blue Volkswagen polo(1.2L Diesel). As much as I loved that car, the engine did have a lot of turbo lag and I had to perform lot of gear changes in order to keep it in power band. This used to get very tiring in traffic and I thought now is the good time to move to automatics.

Background:
I had given my hopes for buying a new car since we wanted to buy a new home. We started looking for home in our budget in March 2021 thinking that homes might have become cheaper in pandemic , but we quickly realized that house prices has increased very sharply and inflation had been very high.
Inflation in car prices has been nothing compared to house prices. We dropped the plan of buying house for 2-3 years to let that high inflation average out. My wife gave me go ahead for purchasing a new car.

Research Process

Kia Seltos: The no brainier actually. Red Seltos 1.4 DCT was supposed to be booked in March 2021 and get delivered in around May 2021.
Test drive was great, SA was helpful, Chinchawad Kia dealership experience was professional(Baner kia dealership experience was bad). Engine was peppy,gearbox was smooth, ride was stiff but looks covered for it. All in all a great car to upgrade. Wife loved it.
All good, what could go wrong ? Before booking the car, searched for issues on Team-BHP.I was not aware of GNCAP barely 3-star worthiness of Seltos since I had not been following car news when GNCAP ratings for Kia Seltos were disclosed. Explained to wife the reason to drop the Kia Seltos. It is really sad because Kia Seltos is such a nice vehicle to miss out.

Hyundai Creta: I never liked the looks of new Creta although my wife was absolutely fine with it. Interiors are nice, but the central panel somehow
does give you a feeling of being loose.The dashboard seems to be too plain and boring. The wow factor aka "panoramic sunroof" is there and gives airy feeling inside the cabin. I test drove 1.4L DCT, Test drive was good, ride quality in city is excellent.
But the Creta has become too common now , the waiting period is insane. I had safety concerns also with Creta(sharing the platform with Seltos), so dropped the Creta from list.
The worst dealership experience I had in my year long search has been with Hyundai dealers. Even if other dealers/manufacturers are selling fewer vehicles, they do have or will arrange the variant of your choice for test drive. But not with Hyundai dealerships. They are not even interested in selling you a Creta. I asked one of the salesperson for a test drive of any variant, he said why do you need test drive sir , just book the Creta, everybody does the same. I visited 3 showrooms , none of them had it for display forget about test drives. Finally, Kundan motors were able to arrange a test drive after long persistence since I did not want to reject a car without test drive.

Jeep Compass: Jeep dealership experience had been absolutely best. I have test driven petrol automatic 3 times, diesel manual and automatic each once.
Interiors are fantastic, quality overall is great. The manual diesel is absolutely hoot to drive. If buying manual would have been an
option, I guess this is the easiest choice to make. Diesel automatic was also good but out of budget. I did not like the Petrol Automatic. It is little slow to react to pedal input and it almost felt like gearbox was confused lot of times on varied speeds.If driven in relaxed manner with gentle pedal push, the petrol automatic behaves as per expectation. Fuel efficiency with my kind of driving was around 9-10 KMPL in city which is good enough for vehicle of this size. Jeep should have provided at-least sports mode to
make this one more enjoyable as rest of the car is wonderful.

VW Taigun/ Skoda Kushaq: Both the dealership experiences were great with respect to test drives. I test drive 1.5 DSG Taigun/Kushaq. Both
were almost similar to drive and liked them both. I booked Red Taigun on 24-Oct-2021 as I had familiar experience with the dealership.
As days went by , I started seeing Red Kushaq and Red Taigun on road. I started liking Red Kushaq more and more. I cancelled Taigun booking and booked the Red Kushaq.

Buying Process
Booked the Kushaq at Akoya Motors, Baner, Pune and the experience with them has been very good. Got a discount at Insurance by sharing quotes from other vendors like HDFC Ergo. Took the 4 year service plan at 15,999 as well as opted for extended warranty. The car does not have electrically foldable ORVM. My car was delivered on 27-Jan-2022 and the circular from Skoda about Rs 15000 discount came on 28-Jan-2022. I sent email to Zac which was forwarded to Skoda customer care. They did not give me any cashback but gave in writing that Auto ORVM will be installed free of cost by year end.
Other than that , the overall experience with Akoya Motors has been pleasant. Now a days, there is certain pleasantness in buying a car which is not much in demand(but you love the car), you are treated well and you get the car in reasonable time-frame. This is so unlike what you experience in Hyundai dealership(if you are buying Creta, with other cars especially Alcazar the experience has been good).
Changed the tyres from MRF Wanderer 205/55/R17 to Continental UC6 215/55/R17 in the same evening.

Drive Experience
Already have driven 200km.
Some observations:

• Thunderstorm rattling on first day evening from left door which just vanished with good night sleep. No rattling since then.

• Ride quality is very good but you do feel large/sharp potholes.

• 1.5DSG is super fun to drive and seems efficient too with its ACT technology. It gets activated a lot in city driving also and is seamless.

• The cabin is spacious for four people. The middle seat is only for small kid.

• Interior quality is almost as good as what competition offers(Except MG Astor).

• Audio quality is very good.

• Its compact size with clever packaging inside and great engine/gearbox makes it very practical car for a small urban family.

Note: Huge thanks to Team-BHP members whose posts has been instrumental in increasing my awareness about car buying/selling, getting NCB certificate etc or just about anything.

[rideon74]

Originally Posted by thanixravindran

...got the delivery of 2022 Kushaq 1.0 TSI Ambition MT

Originally Posted by sid2017

Finally, my Tornado Red 1.5 DSG Style 6 air bags was delivered on last Thursday.

Congrats to both of you and here's wishing you many safe & happy miles ahead. Two reds in a row!

[thanixravindran]

I was looking for the online manual of Kushaq to figure out the Coming Home/Leaving Home light settings. It seems there are two manuals. One is the PDF version that can be downloaded by anyone which is exactly the same as that of printed one. Link - https://www.skoda-auto.co.in/aid/skoda-owners-manual

Another one seems to be the online version which can be accessed by entering the VIN number of your car here - https://manual.skoda-auto.com/004/en-com/Models. I was surprised that there is a language selection - French and English (Indian). I thought it was a documentation error but there is a French manual indeed for Kushaq.

Is Kushaq planned to be exported any French speaking market or manual is originally prepared in French and translated to English?

[rideon74]

A few days ago, there were some discussions on the dashboard & door panel rattles that's been bothering some of the Kushaq owners. It is disheartening to note that:

1. The rattles were from the same locations as mentioned by the members - the center of the dash or the front passenger door panel.

2. These niggles are yet to be completely resolved by the SVCs of the respective owners.

I'm one among the owners (Nov 2021, Style 1.0L MT) who have the above mentioned dash & door rattle ruining my otherwise happy ownership experience. Plus in my case, the door beading replacement is yet to be successfully completed.

I'd recorded the rattling issue on video earlier and shared them to the SVC to help them understand how bad things are getting. On an impulse, I made a video today to detail out the above two niggles and added my analysis of what is the root cause of the same:

The Kushaq: A victim of cost cutting?

I'd recommend using headphones/earphones to really hear the commotion happening within my Kushaq's cabin.

[Kosfactor]

^ This is bad. It should not creak so much on a ramp like that, hope the vehicle is reasonably stiff, else over time all these things will get worse.

The flexing and creaking of the dashboard is not something that can be fixed , perhaps Skoda should recall the vehicle and fit a redesigned trim piece that does not squeak and rattle.

[eccentric]

Originally Posted by rideon74

I'd recommend using headphones/earphones to really hear the commotion happening within my Kushaq's cabin.

It sounds worse! Regarding the dashboard rattles, I presume the primary reason may be the suspension.

After 2:32 in the video, I could hear thuds transmitted throughout the cabin which means the either the front end suspension setup is extremely stiff (inherent nature of Kushaq itself?) or maybe a batch of defective dampers. AFAIK, the ride shouldn't be this harsh. In my test ride, the undulations of the road are very well masked at speeds below 80 KMH.

Would insist you to check the rebound rate of the dampers with the SVC and the manufacturing year of tires as well.

Yes, finicky plastics will also aggravate the problem further but it will not be the root cause. The un-damped vibrations of the road weakens the poorly screwed together assemblies and that IMO, is the root cause.

[Col Mehta]

Originally Posted by rideon74

I'd recommend using headphones/earphones to really hear the commotion happening within my Kushaq's cabin.

Oh that's some serious rattling going on in your car !!

I always knew Skoda/VW's India 2.0 strategy was flawed with some really bad cost cutting measures, but this is absolute bizzare and equally ludicrous!

To have such rattles in your new car hurts. I'm sorry that you are going through this bad ownership experience, and I sincerely hope Skoda can fix these issues ASAP.

[Floyd de Souza]

Are Taigun owners also facing the same issues?