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Brought home a Maruti WagonR AMT: Why I chose it over the competition

12th January 2024, 13:05 by Dev Shah

We couldn't convince ourselves about the looks of the Ignis. Otherwise is a very competent car.

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Hello BHPians,

We were on a look out for a 2nd car, which would be mostly driven within the city by my wife. So automatic was the main requirement, along with high seating for parents, and good visibility overall. The budget was set at 8L.

I explored the used car market for couple of months but none of the cars really ticked all the boxes. There was some compromise or the other. Plus the push by the family not to go for a used car. So we decided to go for a new car.

Cars considered:

Ignis: We couldn't convince ourselves about the looks of it. Otherwise is a very competent car. Also the colour we liked (Turquoise Blue) has been discontinued now.
Swift: We were almost ready to book Red Swift VXI. But felt it was too common on the roads and was going slightly over budget.
Grand i10 Nios: The seating was too low for my parents. That was a deal breaker.
Tiago: It is a good car, but looked small on the road. Plus, wanted to stay away from infamous niggles in a Tata car and the ASS.
WagonR: I always liked the big new WagonR. I feel it looks like a baby Bolero Neo or ScorpioN. Family members too liked it but were concerned with the Cab image it carries. But it otherwise satisfied all our requirements mentioned above.

I showed the videos of Black edition WagonR on YouTube to my family members and they too felt it was unique. Since black comes only in ZXI & ZXI+ variants, there are almost nil chances of it being seen as a cab as they do not come with CNG.

So with year-end discounts kicking-in in December, I casually started checking with multiple dealers in the city for Black WagonR. Fortunately one of the dealers had Black ZXI in stock. I did not want ZXI+ as it came with black alloys. I like silver (contrast) wheels on a black car. We booked it immediately and did a basic PDI.

Since we wanted it to be unique on the road and as wife liked the Red Swift very much, I asked the dealer to paint the rear-spoiler and ORVMs in Fire Red shade of Swift. My SA was initially hesitant but I was confident that I wanted it that way. And here is the outcome:

On seeing this on road we have been approached by many asking if it is a newly launched special edition. Few said that they couldn't recognize that it was a WagonR in first glance. Even few cabbies and auto rickshaw drivers gave compliments.

Got the RTO formalities done and the car was delivered within a week on our wedding anniversary in December 2023. Got discounts of almost 40k which included cash discount + corporate discount + discount on insurance and accessories. Overall this ZXI variant costed around 8L on-road with all the accessories, perfectly in budget.

Likes:

Head turner due to the unique colour.
High seating - front & back.
Good visiblility all around
AMT is not so bad as I expected earlier. It is livable.
Lot of space inside as well as good boot-space.

Dislikes:

Those stupid seat-belt warning beeps for vacant rear seats.
Idle auto-on/off function which is enabled by default each time the engine is started.
No rear-washer, wiper, defogger even in ZXI variant.
No driver seat height adjustments. (although the seats are little higher than other cars)
Maruti-800 like air circulation knob.
No adjustable head rests.

Added a red strip in the front bumper extender. Planning of few more accessories and mods. Will hopefully post it in the 'tastefully modified cars' thread then.

Couple of more pics: