Team,
With the "shocker" of the Creta pricing announcement + a full night's rest later,
I have decided to go ahead with my purchase - the Creta SX+ Petrol.
Reasons:
1) There is
no other GOOD and SENSIBLE petrol option in this segment (not counting EcoSport because it's a mini SUV under 4 meters and whose EcoBoost Titanium (O) petrol is around 11.10 lakhs OTR), other than the Creta SX+, which offers plenty of bang for the buck.
The Dusters don't offer much in their base and mid variants, out of which the mid-variant is overpriced for the equipment it offers, while the Nissan Terrano's sole petrol option is it's mid-variant which is outrageously priced
at 10.15 lakhs!! (
ex-showroom Delhi).
The Creta SX+, at 11.19 lakhs for the same location, offers plenty of equipment and is decently loaded in the safety front as well. Have a glance at the two competitors and their feature-wise charts, at the end.
2) With the petrol engine size at 1.6L and the length of the car over 4 meters,
there were no excise-duty liberties for Hyundai to play with.
3) True, Hyundai could have priced the 1.4L diesel variants a bit lesser, but considering that their 1.4L mill makes
5 PS more power and 24Nm more torque than the equivalent Duster 85PS unit, they went for optimistic pricing, more so due to the overall packages on offer in the Base, S & S+ variants (exclusive to the 1.4L CRDI).
4) It is actually with the 1.6L diesels, where Hyundai has gone
too optimistic in their pricing. More so with the SX+ AT, which at first glance doesn't make much sense.
But you have to factor in this - the 6-speed AT in the Creta is the
fully-imported one which is doing duty in the Elantra.
They could have gone for the 4-speed Verna unit and priced it a lakh lesser, but it's laudable that they did the right thing and gave this beast the power + transmission it truly deserves.
Not only is this box a pioneer in the segment, but it also costs near about the Scorpio AT's 6-speed unit (which is actually a much older one) at 13.14 lakhs. Although, for a more direct comparison on overall dimensons + features + ease of daily use,
the Scorpio AT makes a compelling case for itself over the Creta AT.
5) The SX(O)'s pricing is
actually really steep. They could have topped the Creta range within 13 lakhs which might have made the whole lineup look more competitive by knocking off some significant moolah from the top 3 variants - SX+ manual diesel, SX+ AT diesel & SX (O), but since they had already priced the 1.4 diesels a bit higher, going downwards was difficult.
6)
There is no justification for the SX(O) manual to encroach upon the XUV 500 W8's range, since the latter belongs to a different segment altogether.
This is where Hyundai has blundered big-time. Despite premium fit-and-finish and a whole plethora of features, the Creta is after all a compact SUV and a strict 4+1 seater. It should have been kept down to match the Duster's pricing, give or take 30,000-40,000 more. Hyundai did this with the petrols and the 1.4 diesel Base, S & S+ as best as they could, but lost the plot with the pricing of the 1.6L diesel variants.
BUT, consider this - Renault & Nissan's diesel offerings are
1.5L diesel units, whereas the Creta's top 3 variants have the
1.6L diesel plonked into them. The
less than 1500cc duty clause applies to the Nissan/Renault twins, but
NOT to the Creta.
Overall, I did some serious re-thinking continuously from the time I returned from the dealership, and my practical mind brought the calculator out. This is my reasoning behind my decision - the Duster's RxL variant and the RxZ variant (both 85 PS & 110 PS diesels) have a
price difference of around 1.3 lakhs, give or take a few. If you add this to the Duster petrol RxL price,
you end up with ~10.95 lakhs for a possible Duster petrol RxZ variant (which is not on offer right now).
The Creta SX+ is priced at
11.19 lakhs.
The Nissan Terrano's sole petrol option, the mid-variant XL, is pegged at 10.15 lakhs. Factoring the 1.44 lakh price difference between the XL diesel and the XV (top) diesel, and you reach this conclusion - if there was a Terrano XV petrol on offer,
it would have been priced at an eye-watering 11.59 lakhs!!
(all pricing is
ex-showroom, Delhi)
As someone said earlier in the thread, Hyundai has merely followed what was existing as the (overpriced) market trend. The Duster & the Terrano are ridiculously overpriced, and Hyundai have "matched" them. They could have cut down the prices of the top 3 variants by at least 50,000 to make them more acceptable (a 1 lakh-cut would have shown Nissan & Renault a real mirror on how they are looting their customers), but then, in the real world scenario today, they are justified by their high pricing call for the Creta.
Tomorrow, the Creta might not set the sales charts on fire, but it has
an appeal and a
feel-good factor which is hard to resist. Something which the Duster or Terrano or EcoSport couldn't ignite in this heart of mine. It ticks most of my requirement boxes (the XUV 500 for all it's VFM worth is still too huge to maneuver through city conditions on a daily basis), and, simply put,
has created a soft spot in my heart (which is in overtime mode already!).
As for my particular Creta, the White one I was scheduled to pick up yesterday was allotted to someone else because I had stopped the proceedings and because of heavy, undue pressure on the dealership management (there was a Red on offer as well which I had rejected). A new lot is on the way from the factory with more petrols and more colour options, which will reach my dealership in a week's time. I shall see which one suits me.
Most probably it might turn out to be White again, or maybe the Stardust, or the Beige (I fancy those too as well). Hope the colour/shade choices don't give me more sleepless nights now!
Duster: Creta: Duster Petrol Specifications: 1598 cc, 104 PS power @ 5850 RPM, 145 Nm torque @ 3750 RPM, 13.05 kmpl (ARAI).
Creta Petrol Specifications: 1591 cc, 123 PS power @ 6400 RPM, 154 Nm torque @ 4850 RPM, 15.29 kmpl (ARAI).