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Dear Friends,
After almost a year of search, reading countless threads on this forum, comparing cars and swinging between buying and not buying a car, I am finally buying a Fiesta 1.6 ZXI petrol, sea grey in colour and will be getting delivery on 8th May. As far as i know, this is the second Sea grey colour on the forum after jaganm.
Here is my entire buying experience:
In april09, I was happily entrenched in my job, as Regional Sales Manager in MNC with a 8am-10pm job. My office was in Khar(W) and I live in thane. Daily travel was about 80km, if i only went to office and around 100 km if i went to market visits as well. On an average of 2000 km per month. I was driving Ford ikon 1.3 flair petrol, paparika red.
Before, all of you jump on me and say why not "DIESEL", I had no choice as it was a company car, chosen and bought by company and passed on to me from the previous incumbent with around 15k on the odo. I also was not allowed to fit a CNG/GAS kit as the asset belonged to the company.
Suddenly, I got an irressistible offer and I decided to change jobs around Mid may.
Now the question of the car came up.
New one or old one?
So I did a bit of TD and came across Team-BHP for the first time on my net searches.
But just before i was leaving, my previous company agreed to sell the car at my price and therefore i dropped my plan to buy a new car.
Status quo was maintained till this march'10 till Finance minister changed tax laws on perquisites and tax benefits on personal car were withdrawn and only available on company car with much lower taxation rate.
So, with all my working i realised that a new company car will cost me only 5k additional due to the tax savings and secondly, my company capitalises cars only at ex-showroom prices, thus giving almost a lakh rupees benefit.
So dejavu, and my car search started again.
By this time, I had joined a carpool, and with no market visits, my monthly driving fell to 600 kms per month. Secondly, I had to buy a car under 6 lakhs with fiesta allowed as an exception.
I had researched the following petrol cars:
1. Honda City
2. SX4
3. Fiat Linea
4. Indigo Manza
5. Fiesta
I didn't look at hatchs as i wanted a Sedan and i didn't consider Verna due to looks and Indigo due to its taxi image.
Now My TD experience
1. Honda City-ANHC: I TD this car in may09. This was the car i had always planned as my next car. The space was good, interiors excellent and car drove and handled well. However, with almost 10L OTR price tag, it seemed way too expensive I was not ready to give such a big premium only for honda brand name. This time around, with the new realty, I skipped this car alltogether from list of probables.
2. SX4: This was TD at the same time as ANHC. I liked the tall boy design of this car. Car drove well and was responsive on all speeds. Features were good and being a maruti, AS* was not a problem. However, I had visibility issues with the right A pillar and i had to bend to see the traffic lights, etc. Also, Maruti had stopped the production of this car so issue on spares was expected. Now, the new SX4 has been launched but is more than my budget and hence not considered.
3. Fiat Linea: I liked this car from the day it was launched and followed the various threads in this forum on Linea. It seemed the best car- great looks, decent space and unheard of features at an unbelievable price.
AS* concerns and stories of underpowered engine and issues in city traffic made me ponder. I did TD this car. Car drove well and handled very well. I also felt the power issue in lower gears as i drive my ikon aggressively and felt the difference. But the car I feel still suits people who seek good and smooth ride quality. Overall, I was impressed by the car and included it in my shortlist. However, I was in for a shock this april. The prices have shot through the roof since the launch last year and even the base petrol active version was around 6.6 Ex showroom and Emotion at around almost 9 lakhs OTR in mumbai. So emotion went out of my Budget and with active i didn't want to compromise on the features and engine both at the same time. So Linea dropped off my list
4. Indigo Manza Aura+ Safire: i was bowled over by the features of this car and the price at which it was coming. With a bit of negotiation and corporate discount, it was coming to 6.01 Ex showroom in mumbai. No other sedan in this price segment was offering airbags/ABS/Stero Mounted controls/Blue n Me/etc. I TD the car and i liked the space inside the car. The car is really comfortable and beats all other cars hands down. The car seemed to look better everytime i looked at the car and black color seemed a monstrous beauty. However, the back still looked awkard to me. The drive was ok as I felt the pedal to be very soft and i was not getting any feedback from the engine via the pedal. I also felt a lag between the pedal and the car's response. Could be due to TD vehicle was due for service. The interiors though not in the same league as Linea or Fiesta, are quite acceptable for the price of the car and not as bad as several posts have been indicating. Overall, for those who have a driver, this is the car for them.
5. Fiesta 1.6: I liked the car from day1. It has a powerful engine and a responsive pedal. The car handles well and zips beautifully in city traffic. Being an owner of Ikon, I know how to manage the AS* from ford and the maintenance cost is much lower than most non-ford owners think.
The car interiors are great and stock music system is great. However, there is no remote for the music system, no steering mounted controls, no bluetooth interface(its there in Figo) and no USB port. So i'll have to find alternate solutions for all these.
I liked the new face lifted Fiesta, especially the new grill and the headlights. Finally, with a hefty corporate discounts, number of freebies, 1.6 ZXI was fitting into my budget. With 2 red cars in the family, We decided to go for sea grey which is a beautiful colour.
We will finally get our new car today at around 4 pm. I have already done the PDI yesterday with 26km on the odo.
However, buying the fiesta was not so easy. Initially, I had a very bad experience with the dealer and then later with Ford company people when i escalated the matter to them. Later on however, the dealer made up for its mistake while they and ford kept blaming each other. In a nutshell, Ford refused to intervene, told me not to waste their time and deal with dealer directly and that they have nothing to do with the matter. Only reason i went ahead and decided to buy the car was that i didn't want to compromise on the car and dealer was rolling out the red carpet for everthing. Yesterday, it seems that Ford office in chennai has taken cognisance and action has been initiated against the rude officials.
So Alls well that ends well.
Plan now is to take delivery and decide on the accessories ( i have a 18k budget) and give the car back next week for fitting them.
Will post the pics soon.
Thanks to Team-BHP for coming to my rescue several times during this car search.
Finally I got my Car delivered to me at 6.00 pm after waiting for 3 hours. The keys were received by my 6 yr old Daughter.
There were some minor scratches in the rear bumper which dealer has given in writing that it will be fixed in next visit to the service station.
We drove the car from Malad to Sai Baba temple on Western Express highway in bumper to bumper traffic.
We got the puja done at the Sai baba temple and drove from Kandivali to Thane via ghodbunder road.
No matter how much you TD, the actual drive is 100 times better than on TD vehicle. We went to the showroom in a meru cab which unfortunately was an esteem. It appeared we were on a horse back. Return journey was contrastingly smooth with the Fiesta gliding on the same road and all the potholes, uneven stretches seemed have been ironed by the Fiesta.
However, There were two things i noticed. DTE was showing ridiculous figures. It was showing 68 when we left. In the next 10 kms it dropped down to 30 and by the time I hit a pump after another 8km, the DTE droppped to 9. I guess that when we move slow in bumper to bumper traffic, it adjusts the FE and calculates the DTE on dynamic basis.
Secondly, I have got the mirror type 4 Sensor reverse parking gear from Auto cop. I was struggling to figure out how to make sense of what was displaying.
Can anybody help me in making sense of the sounds/display?
Finally, we reached home by 9 pm and parked the car inside our compound. Which meant my Ikon had to give way to the Fiesta.
Only a Fiesta and displace an Ikon.
On pictures, my Digicam konked off and i have taken a few mobile pics and from showroom camera. will post them a little later.
Thanks to all BHPians on sharing my happiness.
Last edited by Dippy : 10th May 2010 at 09:37.
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7th May 2010, 22:32
and my wife refused to let him come anywhere near our car.
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