2012 Maruti Ertiga with multiple issues: Keep & repair or sell it off

It is the only manual car we have in the house and that automatically makes it the most fun to drive vehicle (to me at least).

BHPian MVM recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

We have a 2012 Maruti Suzuki Ertiga ZDI in Serene Blue. She's been good to us over the years, but the years haven't been so kind to her. She's covered 1,50,000 kilometres so far and she's worse for the wear. My father drove the first 50,000 Kilometres after which the car has seen a series of drivers, some skilled and others not so much. She's carried me to every single major exam of my life be it 10th,12th, NEET and even my 1st MBBS final exam and ever since I received my licence 2 years ago I have been driving her as and when needed. She's the only manual car we have in the house and that automatically makes her the most fun to drive (to me at least ).

Here comes the bump in the road.

My dad wants to sell her.

She can still fetch a decent price around the 3-4 lakh price range but I personally feel it would be futile to let her go considering she still does all the heavy lifting in the house (taking my mom to work, carrying all sorts of stuff, she even used to ferry my dog to the vet too when she was alive).

The reason my dad wants to sell her is because he feels the car has become a total jalopy and is terrible to drive. He's not wrong and here's a list of all that is wrong with the car (at least as far as we know):

• A crack in the front bumper (courtesy of when our driver hit a dog)
• Chipping paint on the hood (courtesy of our driver when he hit a tempo and got it fixed at a tinkering shop when we were away)
• Pigmented alloys (too far gone to clean, need to be redone)
• Destroyed suspension, the ride is pretty terrible
• Dying clutch or something worse (not too sure which one), the car shakes like a mouse, especially on inclines, need to coerce her to prevent this. This is already the 3rd clutch courtesy of drivers with strong left legs.
• Floods the neighbourhood with blue smoke on startup, I did ask Parag Sir about this and he told me it's probably because the intercooler is filled with old oil. Following his advice I took her to MASS (because we didn't know any trusted FNGs in Bangalore) and told them to clean the intercooler and change the oil. Returned the next day to pick her up and she did the same thing.
• 7. Dents and scratches on almost every panel. A difficult one being a dent in the left side rocker panel (courtesy of our driver when he misjudged the footpath height during a turn)

I tried telling my dad how we can do some maintenance, spruce her up and keep her for eternity and he agrees but the issue is we don't know any place where we can know the job will be done well. MASS is out of the question considering how lacklustre their service has been. For the past 2/3 few years, we used to get her serviced at a nearby garage but we don't trust them with doing the more complicated maintenance.

Here's the big question, DO WE KEEP HER AND fix a few things (clutch, suspension, new bumpers etc) that'll make the driving experience marginally better, OR SELL HER?

My dad told me that if we decide to keep her he'll give me a budget of 25-30k to make the car as mechanically sound as possible.

I do have some downtime after my 2nd year exams and I wouldn't mind spending some of it to oversee and manage the repairs but we would need a great service centre.

Thank You very much for reading.

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