9,000 km with my Tata Altroz DCA: Why I would recommend it to others

We are getting a mileage between 11 and 12 kmpl in the city and around 14-15 kmpl on highway runs.

BHPian W.A.G.7 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

A significant milestone for us. The car has completed 9000 km this weekend. Overall, we are very satisfied with the car.

• The automatic features - rain sensing wipers, headlamps work perfectly well. The headlamps are hyper sensitive, meaning as soon as you enter a dark place, they get activated; for example, under a metro station. Conversely, if you come out of a dark place, they don't switch off so quickly, but nothing to complain as such. The rain sensing wipers work flawlessly.

• The DCA gearbox is fantastic. Period. Nothing ever comes close to it. I just wish when we bought the car, it had the wonderful iTurbo engine mated to this thing. It would have made a killer combo and would have scored Tata some big brownie points. The gearbox works fantastically, meaning upshifts and downshifts are smooth and jerk free; but it's let down by the underpowered engine.

• Fuel efficiency is okay, given that this is a heavy solidly built car. We are getting somewhere between 11 and 12 kmpl in the city and around 14-15 kmpl on highway runs.

• The Harman sound system is another big selling point. It sounds really great and unless you are a full blow audiophile, it will make up for the needs of 95% of the folks out there. All the notes, bass and tunes are crystal clear and just the way we like them. Both of us are not very much "music oriented" but we like our stuff our way.

• We have used both the FM radio and bluetooth connectivity (Spotify) to play songs and they sound great to us.

• Rear leg room is awesome, you wonder how they managed to extract so much space from a hatch back. But here I have a gripe about the underthigh support. My heigh is 5'10", and if I have to sit at the rear, I always end up knees above the seat. On the contrary, my wife is 5'2" and she finds it "just adequate", not okay but just about enough for her.

• The air conditioner (auto climate control) works absolutely well. This summer in Pune, it touched 40+ degrees celsius and yet the A/C managed to cool the cabin in a span of 5-6 minutes. The blower makes an audible noise for anything above the position 4. 1-3 is okay, 4 is audible but not intrusive and anything above 4 is audible + intrusive.

• We always have to turn down the cooling (increase the temperature and turn down the blower speed to 2 or 3) after 10-15 minutes of it getting switched on.

• Yesterday the car lost it's right eye. Looks like the low beam headlamp got fused. We noticed it when the right side looked darker than the left. The high beam works fine though. A minor niggle, but something that can be fixed in a few minutes at any garage.

• The Good Year ATM tyres are fantastic. Grip levels are satisfactory and the car always feels planted at any speed on the highway or in the city. Maybe when it completes 3 years, we will contemplate a replacement with the tyres that are good at that time.

• The engine performance with the A/C running on full blast is okayish. Meaning this is a sedate cruiser. If you want to burn rubber, then this is definitely not the car for you. On the highway with 5 people, A/C running at full blast and the accelerator pedal mashed in all the way, it takes it's own sweet time to cross 100kmph. The gear box has to drop down once (at times two gears), and the engine becomes responsive only after it crosses 2.2k RPM.

• Why Tata? Such a beautiful chassis and gearbox let down by an underpowered engine. This is supposed to be their premium hatchback and in competition with the i20 (normal + N-Line), and they should have by default provided the 120 horsepower iTurbo engine for the car.

• The big meaty flat bottom steering wheel is a delight to hold, so is the big chunky gear lever.

All right, enough updates, here are some interior pictures. If you are looking for a city use car, then go for this one eyes closed. I understand there are a lot of negative sentiments about Tata in this forum as well as on Google but for us, it has been a very very satisfied 9000 km of journey. I would definitely recommend a Tata car at this point of time. Maybe a couple of years ago, my opinion would have been different.

Cabin light is adequate, but should have been in the centre.

Rear view is mitigated by two huge headrests at the rear.

Audio controls work flawlessly. For calls as well as for music.

Cruise control is fun, but not with a full load of 5 peoples and luggage. Best used when there are only two or three folks in the car. If you use this feature with a loaded Altroz, it only struggles to maintain the speed that you have set with the gearbox frequently downshifting and then upshifting again. Only to have it downshift and the cycle continues...

Standard power window console, only the driver's side gets and auto down functionality. No auto wind up. Measly and lousy cost cuttting in an otherwise loaded hatch.

A pic of the speedo console.

The wonderful sounding Harman Kardonn sound system. Great for 99% of the people out there.

Here's a pic of the centre console. Always feels good to have physical buttons. They are so intuitive, that we can change the settings without even having to look down.

Here's the mileage for a trip to Satara and back. Fully loaded with 5 folks + their luggage

And the 9000kms milestone! We are loving the experience.

Read BHPian comments for more insights and information.