Team-BHP - My Bold Beige ANHC S M/T. Update 3rd service, 6000 kms.

Picked up my ANHC S M/T from Magnum on Saturday 21 March 09.

Deciding over the car was a long and complicated process. You can read about the entire story in the following two threads:

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/sedans...2-choices.html
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/sedans...erna-crdi.html

Color
I liked Silver but my better half didn’t want it as we already have a silver car. So we decided on polished metal. When we visited the showroom, my wife liked the Bold Beige better in flesh. It's not a common color, so we did a double take and moved to the Bold Beige.

Space:
There are numerous threads talking about space here. I won’t have anything additional to contribute – one of the best in this regard in C segment.

Engine & Performance:
Magnum recommended a 1000 Km run-in. I read through the manual (yes, I do read manuals!) where it mentions a run-in of 1000 and to anticipate and avoid hard braking for the first 300 Km. I am following Tbhp recommended run-in procedure. I have kept things under 2.5K rpm and 80kmph yet. Babying the car is annoying, especially after doing 7 years of spirited driving. 880 more Kms to go!

I won’t talk much about performance etc for two reasons:

its talked about a lot in here
i still haven’t revved it.

I will wait till I fire up those vtec cams from 3000rpm. Suffice to say - its brilliant to drive in city (and surprisingly effortless compared to my Palio).

Price
Bangalore OTR was 9.68L (before April 1 price hike). I got 15 corporate discounts and an additional 6.7K on insurance by going with the corporate preferred insurer. So, total discounts came to ~22k. Final OTR price was 9.46L. (Yes i know, it’s expensive in Bangalore :Frustrati)

Accessories
1) Vkool V70 for front windshield + 3M RE35 for everything else
2) Red Soul Parking Sensor
3) Mudflaps (come on, Honda!)
The damages came to 23K. Most expensive being the v70 for the front shield around 11K. 3M was 5500 and Redsoul cost me 6.5.

Vkool on the front is great! Driving in the early morning is effortless and the heat/glare reduction is worth the money spent.

Redsoul is good and very convenient. It has 6 sensors - 2 at front and 4 at back. It’s hooked to both the reverse gear and brakes. Only quirk is if i am in traffic, with clutch and brakes and a biker or a kid selling magazines crosses the car, it beeps inside. Switching to handbrake would turn it off.

GC
This was another of my big concerns with City. With my nuclear family cruised around the Bangalore roads with some of the nastiest speed breakers - no scraping yet. Maybe that will come when you have 5 adults + luggage. So far, so good.

Mileage
My car was showing 41Km on the odo and the mileage of 9.4kmpl at the time of delivery. I started driving and noticed the fuel empty indicator was up. Hmm... I didn’t expect a full tank anyway. Anyway pulled over to the nearest pump and filled for 500/-. Sunday morning I hit my favorite pump and filled to brim and reset everything. I have driven around 60 kms since then, in city and A/C on 100% and the display shows 13.9kmpl now. If i subtract 2 kmpl for an overenthusiastic display, i am getting around 11.9 kmpl. Let’s see when i check with tankful method next time - not in a hurry for this.

ICE
I love the stock ICE setup. Very clean and elegant solution - i have hooked up my USB stick and iPod and both work beautifully. I like the fact that Honda threw away the CD player and made that space usable to keep your pod/stick safe and hidden without anything sticking out. Your mileage may vary. Speakers are decent, audiophiles may look elsewhere.

Dealership Experience
I went with Magnum, since i have received recommendations about their work quality. So far experiences have been excellent. Mr.Muralidhar from sales have been a pleasure to do business with, He was prompt, before and after closing the deal. The delivery was sharp at 3 PM, as promised. All things were ready, and i did rest of my TBhp checklist and ran through the features in about 35 mins and was out of the showroom. (I did a pre-registration inspection 2 days before registration following the same checklist). He did a courtesy call to make sure i am happy with the experience after the delivery. They mentioned a quick service facility where if booked a time slot ahead the service would be done in 1.5 hours. That would be great!

I would gladly recommend Magnum for anyone looking at Honda. :thumbs up

Pics
There are lots of ANHC pics on the forum, exterior and interior – so not adding too many pics. Nonetheless, here’re a few pics just for fun factor.

My daughter Neha was most excited about the new car and helped me drive through the tbhp checklist!

Quote:

Originally Posted by vasoo (Post 1225807)

Congrats Skywalker. That's a great writeup and a good car.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tanwaramit (Post 1225814)

Excellent car, good color choice, nice writeup.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bIte tHe bulLet (Post 1225843)

congratulations my friend....

Quote:

Originally Posted by white_vdi (Post 1225993)

thats a great looking car skywalker!

Quote:

Originally Posted by tanwaramit (Post 1225814)

Excellent car, good color choice, nice writeup.

thanks vasoo,tanwaramit,bIte tHe bulLet,white_vdi,tanwaramit and others.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kutlee (Post 1225830)

nice color. good variation from the normal boring beige.

Quote:

Originally Posted by akshay4587 (Post 1225796)

i like this color ,(i think only ANHC comes in this color)looks very good in flesh,especially with alloys

Quote:

Originally Posted by agm (Post 1225847)

Congrats mate.I saw this colour couple of days back and i was like :Shockked: this colour look fab in ANHC.

Quote:

Originally Posted by uday.ere (Post 1225884)

Thats a brilliant shade on the ANHC and pretty rare too. Cheers

Quote:

Originally Posted by prince_pervez (Post 1225897)

Congrats Skywalker on your new purchase. Still feel white is the best color on this model but this is not bad at all.

I am not a beige color fan. It looks a little boring. However, this one was much darker and looked really good on the car. Also there are too many polished metal,red and silver ones on road now - so we wanted a different color.

Quote:

Originally Posted by agm (Post 1225847)

Do upload few more snaps,and are you planning to upgrade to alloy wheels etc?

Quote:

Originally Posted by kutlee (Post 1225830)

planning to upgrage tyres?

i thought long and hard here about alloys and up-sizing and decided already paid a good amount on accessories. Nothing planned yet :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bubby (Post 1225853)

A query, have Honda started to fit some covering under the engine bay ( from the front bumper to the main assembly area ), the very first lot of ANHC didnt had that.

there's a cover now, made of plastic - but still have a some open space in the middle. I remember seeing a pic in some ownership thread. If it helps i can put a pic on that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by srishiva (Post 1225859)

I have heard that the music system was handpicked by the car's chief designer (engineer) for good quality sound (not the speakers). So, I wonder how good quality after market speaker may sound on this setup.

Interesting info. Sound quality is pretty good for my take. If a tbhpian would do some major ICE upgrade on this, it would be cool.