[ventoman]

I'm not sure if it's because of my-

• TBHP handle

or

• Fabulous ownership experience with my previous Vento TDI (elaborated here)

or

• History of staying back with the same brand or known devil! (as seen with my bullet ownership here)

or

• strong preference towards automatic (as I'm bored to death of driving different manuals)

or

• keen to get back to Petrol, following current trend

But either way, I'm a happy and proud owner of a Toffee brown Vento TSI highline since last 2 weeks. And this is how it all unfolded..

Decision to sell Vento TDI
My old Vento had done close to 44k and it was an absolute gem of a car. My only gripe with the car was to do with door rattling and that too was fixed following the DIY here (Thanks to d_himan). However having completed 4 years, I was contemplating a change, though not serious yet as I had other immediate financial commitments to cater to. Towards end of November, I happened to meet my friend in Chennai who owns a pre facelift Vento TSI. As fate would want it, I happened to drive his car one evening and fell in love with the wonderful TSI DSG combination instantly. And my heart wanted to own one very badly from that moment.

Justification for Vento 2.0
With TSI DSG as my #1 choice, I went on a test drive spree to justify my buy and convince myself that I haven't missed out buying a better car. Following options were considered
Honda City Automatic
I had a dealer close to my home and on one Saturday, I walked into their showroom for a TD (after booking an appointment earlier that week itself). Surprise! Surprise! They don't have an automatic (the new one) for TD in all their Bangalore outlets. So they suggested me to TD a manual car and feel the automatic with another one that had come for service. I stormed out of the showroom in less than 5 minutes.
Skoda Rapid TDI DSG
Round #1
Although I was keen on a petrol, my friends suggested me to test drive a Rapid TDI DSG and feel the difference in handling and suspension. So booked an appointment with Vinayak Skoda near Mekri circle and turned up promptly on a Saturday afternoon. Test drive was good, although short and we returned back to the showroom in about 10 minutes. I asked the sales guy to get my car evaluated and was closing out few queries on features and pricing. He abruptly walked away to attend another customer in the middle of my conversation. Yes he did that! And it got worse when another executive came to me and started off the whole exercise again with a polite "Sir, How can I help you?". We ran out of the showroom and swore to never return back.
Round #2
Called up Tafe, Hosur Road and booked a test drive, asking them to bring the car over to my office close-by. This was somewhere in beginning of Dec and I did not get the test drive done until mid of Jan. "Sir, we have only one TD car for all our showrooms and we have to book an appointment. Somehow or other we are not able to bring it over" was the response from Sales guy. One time, he was about to bring the car when I was heading for a marathon meeting, due to which I declined the TD. Subsequently he started quoting that as an excuse. So yet again a horrible experience with Skoda. If pre-sales was this bad, I was extremely worried about their A**.
Duster/Terrano/EcoSport
We did TD of all these mini SUVs and convinced ourselves that these are large hatchbacks (no offenses to others who own these, as this is my personal opinion) and didn't feel any better than our good old Vento. Added to it was lack of an Automatic option.
XUV 5OO
This was one TD that threatened my first choice as we were extremely happy with the outcome. The lack of automatic edition yet, was the deal breaker here.
Polo TSI
Had I not been pampered by the rear leg space and boot of Vento, there's no looking back other than a Polo TSI.
Others
Verna was considered briefly but ruled out immediately, as I'm not a big fan of H brand (again, no offenses intended). I didn't consider the sedans from Nissan/Renault siblings due to their lacklustre engine offerings.

Selling old Vento
Finally, having convinced ourselves to go ahead with Vento TSI , we set out to VW Palace cross (where I got my first Vento as well) for a test drive. The sales guy was quite good and we test drove both TDI (face lifted) and TSI (pre-face lifted) editions. TSI especially was a longer test drive and lasted a good 30 minutes. Straight away decided to book the TSI. Wife and daughter were extremely happy with resuming our trips on a new Vento. So all in all, was good to go until they came back with a ridiculous offer for my old Vento. I just laughed and asked them to revisit the offer. In the meanwhile, I decided to try selling it myself and the first stop happened to be TBHP Classifieds. There was also a potential buyer via my neighbourhood garage, who almost agreed onto a price I wanted, but short of funds and hence was asking for time. Around the same time, I was approached via our classifieds for seeing and TD my Vento at a place close-by to my office. So after a TD across Nice road, he was quite happy with the car and wanted to proceed further with the deal. Couple of days later, I again met him along with a VW service guy (from another showroom). This time they almost ripped the car on a narrow lane to find any faults, squeaks etc. With heart in my mouth, I was wondering if I had made the right choice in selling off this gem. Anyways, after the drive, they were extremely happy with the car and we quickly agreed on a mutually favourable price giving ourselves a couple of weeks to close out transfer formalities. I received a token advance as well that same evening and decided to not use my Vento any further, as it belonged to someone else. It was torture to see the car in my parking lot and not use it. It's however something I had decided, despite the buyer insisting me to not do so. I also had a very tough time convincing this other potential buyer via neighbourhood garage about his lost deal.

Booking experience
The next day (27.12) after the deal was closed out on my old Vento, I went back to VW Palace cross to book the TSI and chose the new Toffee Brown colour. Made the initial deposit and was promised a delivery within Q1 2015. I was quite surprised at the waiting period and finally had to be convinced that VW treats Polo GT, TSI and Vento TSI/TDI DSG as "Made to Order" editions.

Waiting period
There it was to haunt me again and would have been even more miserable if not for TBHP ownership reviews on Polo/Vento TSI. During the first 2 weeks of Jan, I was quite busy with closing out formalities on selling my old car and one weekend had to let go off my car. It was one of the most depressing evenings in my recent past and I was even contemplating pulling off this whole ordeal. However, memoirs of that pleasant drive in Chennai with TSI DSG kept me going.
Got a call from SA in middle of Jan that they received a Toffee Brown TSI manufactured in Dec 2014 and was allocated to me at 2014 prices. Despite lot of temptation, I let go off that offer, as I realized the value of "one year" whilst trying to find the best price for my old Vento.
Fortunately, a business visit to overseas kept me away from the country and waiting period for nearly 3 weeks. Towards the fag end of the trip (15.feb), I got a call that my car manufactured in Jan 2015 had indeed arrived. Upon return, I was at VW palace cross next day to proceed towards delivery asap. Our wedding anniversary was around the corner and we chose to get our car delivered on that very day (25.Feb). Loan process through SBI was smooth as silk and took merely 45 minutes to get all documentation completed and loan approved.

PDI
On 21.feb Saturday, I visited VW Palace cross' garage on Hesarghatta road for PDI and was armoured with our TBHP checklist. Spent a good hour or so and couldn't spot any issues. After PDI, I requested them to fit in the engine sump guard from TDI edition and response was negative. Finally gave them the go ahead to proceed for registration on Monday (23rd).

Delivery experience
Fixed the time as 4.30-5.30 for delivery on the 25th and we reached the showroom promptly at 4pm with sweets for showroom staff and a Titan watch gift for my SA (Abhishek). Abhishek was very good and had put up with all my queries, demands. He had arranged a seamless delivery on the chosen date with utmost perfection. And our car was marked at their very top for delivery.


Delivery paper work took about 30 minutes and we received few gifts in this goodie bag:


And the contents were :


Finally we went down for formal photo clicks, walk through of the car which was not needed for me (except for DSG) and signed off from there after these parting shots.

[ventoman]

First Drive back home

Car was filled to the brim at a nearby shell outlet and we then proceeded to a temple where we coincidentally did the puja for previous Vento too. And surprise, even priest was the same guy.



And after few shots as below, we proceeded our long journey back home.









That's when the real magic of TSI+DSG was realized. B2B traffic and highways both were handled with utmost ease and I was beginning to get used to resting my left leg.

Finally after a sumptuous feast at Domino's, we retired for the day thereby ending a blissful wedding anniversary.

Initial ownership experience

My Usage Pattern
Car has done about 600kms so far. Since I also have a Bullet, I tend to take the car to work once or twice a week, which is about 40 kms both ways on Nice Road Expressway. That's when I experience the Triptronic and Sports Mode. Apart from that, it's the D mode most of the time on weekends within city limits.

Build Quality, Fit & Finish
One of the main reasons for me going back to Vento is it's everlasting classic look and impeccable finish. There's no compromise on the build quality either and feels like a tank when inside.

Exterior design
Face-lifted 2015 Vento pretty much looks the same as its predecessors, except for the new double barrel headlights and spokane alloys. Double barrel headlights are surprisingly quite powerful and I don't see a need to go down the projector lamps route as yet. Spokane alloys are ok to the eyes and whilst changing to Michelin noticed these were made in Spain. Personally, I prefer looks of original alloys that came in first.

Interior design, quality and comfort
Although it lacks some of the gizmos available with other competitions in this segment, I love the simplicity and consistent pattern of the dash. Fit and finish of the panels are spotless. Interior lighting theme is mostly white and Red. ACC works as expected, although I feel the AC is underpowered and takes a while to cool down. Front hand-rest is a real boon and serves the purpose.
New flat bottom steering wheel is absolute pleasure to drive around. You hardly have to take your hands off the wheel, as most of the controls including MFD is seamlessly integrated. I'm only missing the paddle shifts and cruise control, which I plan to retrofit later. Beige Leatherette seats does look good although they tend to squeak when you move around and difficult to maintain as well. Front and rear passengers have ample leg room and the car is best suited for 4 adults. Boot is enormous and can accommodate all your luggage packed for long holidays. Engine noise is louder whilst starting, but later on NVH is well controlled and hardly makes it inside. DIY exercise to get rid off door rattles went in straight away, although the car is quiet. Interior rear view mirror is still the same and doesn't serve the purpose completely. I've a Gentex auto dimming Mirror which is wider and will be fitting it shortly.

Audio, Bluetooth etc
My first Vento came with a RCD 210 and lacked bluetooth, steering wheel controls. New one has RCD 320 which is still mediocre considering other offerings. However all playback work fine without fuss. Audio quality is just about manageable and I'll be upgrading them to proper speakers, followed by a 2DIN dash after some time. PTT and bluetooth call handling works as specified, although those receiving my calls have complained that I'm hardly audible. This is probably due to the bluetooth MIC being placed on LHS of RCD 320.

Engine Performance
At first I had my apprehensions around a 1.2L (Turbo powered) engine. However first few (test) drives proved me wrong and now with my own car I can vouch for this gem of an engine to deliver power. Turbo kicks in as early as 1400 rpm thus eliminating any lag. It's been a pleasure to drive both within city and on highways (limited drives so far). The growl in Sports Mode is so pleasing to the ears and leaves you with a wide grin wanting more of it.

Transmission
Hats off to VW for providing the 7 Speed Triptronic DSG in Polo and Vento. Its a perfect match for the TSI engine. I was keen to go automatic way for quite some time, but the market offerings in this segment were hardly impressive. Most of them were 4 speed automatic and/or had a rubber band effect. But now with TSI+DSG I have realized my dream of driving a perfect automatic.
As shared by others in this forum, we have the Drive (D), Sports (S) and Manual (Triptronic) Modes. D mode is purely for city driving and ensures upshift to next gear at the earliest opportunity. A gentle tap on accelerator instantly downshifts one gear down and if you floor the pedal, it does respond by downshifting rapidly. So you are NOT let down by the transmission in overtaking situations. Equally, you don't feel this change inside the cabin unless you explicitly focus on it.
Sports Mode is strictly for highways (at least for me) and it transforms the car into a beast in no time. Contrary to D mode, up-shifts are delayed as long as possible in S mode. I've decided to run in the car for 2k kms at least by limiting to 3k rpm and hence have reached only S6 mode so far. Triptronic offers the best compromise between D & S modes wherein you choose to upshift/downshift and it's such a gentle tap to do either. One will have to experience this to feel the pure joy of changing gears without a manual clutch.

Riding and Handling
My drives are so much relaxed these days that I take on board offers to drive to different corners of Bangalore with a wide grin. Also I no longer sweat over traffic piling on uphill ramps, thanks to hill hold assist that gives me the much needed time to switch my right leg from B to A. My SA told me that VW has worked with Suzuki and got a refined set of suspensions for Vento as part of the facelift. But I doubt it to be true, as the new car behaves exactly as the old one, wherein it's slightly softer on humps and you get to hear the infamous rear thud. A long drive will confirm if there was indeed a change to the setup. Ride and comfort has been top notch so far and I feel as good as my old Vento. Post upgrade to Michelin, I feel the car to be well planted on highways and handles cornering with ease and minimal body roll. Brakes do leave a lot to be desired and I'm planning to go the VCDS route shortly to change the settings.

Fuel Economy
FE (based on MFD) has been around 13.5 for D; 14-14.5 for S and 15+ for Triptronic. I was quite surprised by these, but discounting them on account of early days.

Summary
Following would be my summary of Pros and Cons (some are relative based on my previous Vento and first few drives)

Pros

• Amazing TSI + DSG Combo. There are loads of threads by now in TBHP praising this duo.
• Double barrel headlights.
• New Steering wheel is so pleasant to drive around
• New horn placement in SW is convenient when compared to the old one
• MFD, PTT and Bluetooth A2DP all work very well from SW
• Oil temperature indicator now included in MFD
• New interior lighting theme around white and red. (Earlier we had blue too for ACC)
• Hill hold assistance is a boon in some ramps at Malls
• New features such as ESP (yet to experience)
• Foot-well lights

Cons

• Experienced the famous rear thud once again in this new Vento too.
• Lack of paddle shifts and cruise control
• Lack of dead pedal (Seriously VW need to be asked why, when they could for a GT!!)
• No offering other than beige for interior
• New horn is quite shrill
• beige art leather seats would be difficult to maintain
• Lack of visual display for rear parking
• Mediocre RCD 320 HU offering
• AC is not great
• No rear disc brakes.

Few more shots taken later

New RFID tag


Rear seats and Leg room


Front seats and Leg room


Foot-wellLights


New Flat bottom steering


And a close up


HU and central AC vents now get a Silver panel. My old Vento used to have a black panel.


Vento does retain the height adjustable seat belts


The Heart


And the mind



Modifications/Accessories

• Smart Wax'd at Pete's
• Stock tyres changed to Micellin P3ST 195.60.R15 the following weekend itself. I thought of using the stock Apollo for some time, but realized within a couple of rides that I was spoilt by the quietness of Michellin and hence booked an appointment straight away. Total deal was 13.5k for the upgrade after exchanging stock tyres.
• Mud flaps from dealer
• Floor mats from dealer.

Next set of accessories - Short term (hunting for a garage in Bangalore to fix these as well)

• Have procured the auto dimming gentex interior mirror from my UK trip
• By mistake bought LED door sill plates online and keen to fix it.
• Have procured a In-Car Dash cam from my UK trip
• Dead Pedal (not sure where to start the hunt)
• Engine Sump guard (not sure where to start the hunt)
• Planning to do Vinyl flooring
• 3D Mats (although not sure if deal pedal setting can be accommodated with current market offerings)

Next set of accessories - Long term

• Retrofit Cruise control
• Retrofit paddle shifts onto existing MFSW
• HU and speaker upgrade
• Remap to make my Vento as peppier as Polo TSI
• Rear camera

End Credits
I would like to thank all those owners and patrons of VW/TSI in this forum for sharing their experiences. Some of the threads I referred during my decision making days are -

Robin Mahanta - here
RajeevRaj - here
just4wheels - here
prithwi-81 - here
inomad - here
diffsoft - here
Gannu_1 - here

[Aditya]

Thread moved from the Assembly Line to the Initial Ownership Section. Thanks for sharing!

[harsh.m06]

Congratulations on the great buy! I'm also keen on selling my vento tdi and looking for a replacement with an autobox. Most probably, I ll go with the upcoming facelift and tdi+dsg.

[Vishyvish]

Hi Ventoman
Congrats on your new buy, and ooh what a color "gorgeous"😘
Like you said once you experience the DSG everything else is forgotten. The air conditioning has a lot to be desired, but am surprised at the lack of a dead pedal. I too did check out the Vento TSI before opting for the Polo TSI, but somehow missed out on this omission. Have a good ride, great time, and yeah it's addictive; so ensure you take your family along or at home on time.

[Rajeevraj]

Congratulations on a great buy and thank you for acknowledging my ownership report. Glad to hear it was helpful. The car looks majestic in this new color. Wish they had this option in the pre-face-lift days

Wish you all the best and as you already said, I am sure you will keep looking for excuses to take the car out. I thought that feel will go down with time, but 15 months since my purchase, I am still eager and always looking out for a chance to take a spin.

[Turbo_asd]

A very hearty congratulations on your purchase. I thoroughly enjoyed reading through your report. You've made an excellent purchase, and have a great taste for choosing colours.

Please do update this thread on a regular basis. I'm itching to see your mods already.

Wishing you many wonderful miles on your mini- Jetta!

[ventoman]

Originally Posted by harsh.m06

Congratulations on the great buy! I'm also keen on selling my vento tdi and looking for a replacement with an autobox. Most probably, I ll go with the upcoming facelift and tdi+dsg.

Thanks for your wishes. If you leave aside the depreciation factor for your old Vento, TDI + DSG would be one great upgrade. Wishing you all the very best.

Originally Posted by Vishyvish

Hi Ventoman
Congrats on your new buy, and ooh what a color "gorgeous"��

Thanks for your wishes.

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

Congratulations on a great buy and thank you for acknowledging my ownership report. Glad to hear it was helpful. The car looks majestic in this new color. Wish they had this option in the pre-face-lift days

Wish you all the best and as you already said, I am sure you will keep looking for excuses to take the car out. I thought that feel will go down with time, but 15 months since my purchase, I am still eager and always looking out for a chance to take a spin.

Thanks Rajeevraj and I couldn't agree more. Earlier I'd try all possible excuses to avoid driving in Bangalore traffic. But now, its the other way round.

Originally Posted by Turbo_asd

A very hearty congratulations on your purchase. I thoroughly enjoyed reading through your report. You've made an excellent purchase, and have a great taste for choosing colours.

Please do update this thread on a regular basis. I'm itching to see your mods already.

Wishing you many wonderful miles on your mini- Jetta!

Thanks a lot for your wishes.

Starting off with mods, enabled the following via VCDS yesterday. I had ordered this cable via Aliexpress and it turned up in 10 days with 12.12.3 software version.

• Indicator/Needle Celebration
• Instant Fuel consumption display on MFD (was surprisingly disabled)
• Change lane indicator from 3 to 5
• Emergency Brake flashing
• Enabled Tear Wiping
• Hydraulic Brake Assist set to Early
• Expanded Electronic differential Lock set to Strong

Also realized that the BCM module is 6RU-937-087-K, which I think supports cruise control. I can't understand why VW would exclude this feature, as it costs a mere $70-80 in outside market.

[sandeepmohan]

Hands down the best automatic car in the segment and fun to drive. Everything about the Vento Tsi is so easy. Light, easy to use controls, a suspension setup that provides excellent comfort and decent levels of handling, a proven engine that is good on power and economy, good room at the back, well built and finished.

[Tushar]

Congratulations on your purchase and thanks for a great read. Truly felt like I was being walked through the whole process!

So they suggested me to TD a manual car and feel the automatic with another one that had come for service. I stormed out of the showroom in less than 5 minutes.

Seriously surprises me how salespersons think that's ok. You're investing over a lakh more, purely for that transmission and you're expected to make a purchase decision based on assumptions.

Although I was keen on a petrol, my friends suggested me to test drive a Rapid TDI DSG and feel the difference in handling and suspension. So booked an appointment with Vinayak Skoda near Mekri circle and turned up promptly on a Saturday afternoon. Test drive was good, although short and we returned back to the showroom in about 10 minutes. I asked the sales guy to get my car evaluated and was closing out few queries on features and pricing. He abruptly walked away to attend another customer in the middle of my conversation. Yes he did that! And it got worse when another executive came to me and started off the whole exercise again with a polite "Sir, How can I help you?". We ran out of the showroom and swore to never return back.

Hope Skoda is reading this and understands the importance of first impressions for customers. Especially with their revamp plans.

During the first 2 weeks of Jan, I was quite busy with closing out formalities on selling my old car and one weekend had to let go off my car. It was one of the most depressing evenings in my recent past and I was even contemplating pulling off this whole ordeal. However, memoirs of that pleasant drive in Chennai with TSI DSG kept me going.

Somewhere VW's marketing team is seeing some potential for a TVC in your love

[ventoman]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Hands down the best automatic car in the segment and fun to drive. Everything about the Vento Tsi is so easy. Light, easy to use controls, a suspension setup that provides excellent comfort and decent levels of handling, a proven engine that is good on power and economy, good room at the back, well built and finished.

Originally Posted by Tushar

Congratulations on your purchase and thanks for a great read. Truly felt like I was being walked through the whole process!

Thanks for your kind wishes.

Update: Successfully managed to get my 35% NCB transferred from old Vento's insurance to new one. It was quite easy and just required a photocopy of old RC card (after transfer is done), old insurance details, new RC card and new insurance details along with a cancelled cheque. In addition to these documents, I was asked to pay around 2k premium for the old insurance as 0% NCB discount would be applicable for its remaining cover period. I submitted these with Bajaj Allianz last Tue(17.03) and promptly received a refund of 13k from them on 24.03 along with a revised policy details including the NCB.

***Touchwood*** So far So good!

[Insane Devil]

Hey Ventoman,
Congratulations on your vento tsi, fantastic buy!

I am in a dilema between the honda city cvt and the vento tsi or tdi.

I love the tsi motor, already using a polo gt tsi, but i sorely miss some important features from my i20, namely the Auto Dimming rear view mirror, and the comfort key.

The Honda City has these two features but the drive is just ok. Whereas with Vento, i could save around 1.5lk minimum going for vento tsi, or same price of the honda city cvt vx, i can get the vento tdi with dsg.

I have driven both the tsi and tdi dsg for around 20km testdrive, and both are fabulous. The diesel is also very powerful and fun to drive.

Also, updated vento is dew in next few months, so have decided to wait and see if they release these features or not.

Please do update your mileage figures after some time.

Thanks!

[just4wheels]

Congratulations ventoman on your new Vento TSI and thank you for acknowledging my ownership report. The car looks really plush in this new colour. Wishing you many happy miles. Enjoy your new ride, and am guessing that you already are !!

[deovrat]

First of all, let me congratulate you on your new purchase. The car looks great!

Secondly, I couldn't have hoped for a more opportunist time to read this report as I am taking delivery of a Toffee Brown Vento TSI in 2 days !!

The car is already in showroom and I've carried out the Pre-registration inspection.

Any last minute tips?

[Insane Devil]

Hey Deovrat, congrats, and definitely upgrade the tyres as soon as you take the car