Emotions I felt every time I chose a car: Wagon-R, Rapid, Kushaq & eC3

I never felt the “she’s the one" emotion for the Skoda but still, one morning my wife, daughter and I found ourselves on a train to Chennai to pick her up.

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“She’s the one!”- The feeling you get after test driving a car and knowing that is the one you are going to drive back home one day. This is the story of how I felt, whenever I chose a car before I brought it home.

Our old Fiat car is a fond memory of growing up in the eighties in Bengaluru. It was a used car and had been driven all the way from Chennai to Bengaluru by a driver. It was my dad’s first car and he had decided against buying a 2-wheeler, unlike all his colleagues. My dad had twins and felt it was unsafe to ride a bike with two kids and my mum. The car was turmeric brown had a chrome strip running on the sides and had chrome bumpers and door handles and some more around the head and taillights. We have had the car through most of my childhood and my dad and I spent a substantial amount of time tinkering with it.

He is a handy person, loves repairing things and most Saturday afternoons would be spent, changing some part, replacing a worn belt, undoing the water pump (which I remember would fail quite often), extracting the radiator for repair of leaks and so on. After a good 2-3 hrs of work, my dad and I would come back with greasy clothes and grimy hands much to the chagrin of my mother. He used to help me wash off the grease and mum would insist that I take a bath before I touch anything else at home. But what that meant was I had words like radiator, alternator, battery, exhaust, fan-belt, horn, carburettor, Jackie, wrench and so on, in my vocabulary even before I was ten.

I first started driving when I was seventeen. Like most boys who were crazy about cars, I would keenly observe my dad while he was driving and surprisingly, I could drive in my first attempt without too much trouble. We replaced the Fiat with a used Maruti Van just as I turned eighteen and boy the slick stick shift and great steering and suspension was a major upgrade from our previous car. I got my license at 18 and became my dad’s co-driver on long trips and quickly learnt to drive the car quite well within the city. I used the van throughout my college days in Bengaluru and during my post-graduate studies at Vellore.

Years down the line, I bought my first car just before I got married. I took my fiancé to a Maruti showroom, and we did the first of many test drives that we were destined to do together. It was the pre-internet days and I had already decided it would be a Wagon-R as there were not many choices in that price bracket at that time.

I loved the egress and ingress, the driving position, and the power steering. It had central locking, split folding rear seats and a flat expanded boot after folding the rear seats. I got a third-party pioneer audio system installed too. I do not remember the test drive, simply because I was more excited that my fiancé’s parents had agreed to let her go with me for the test drive.

A few months before that test drive, I had met my would-be wife and knew in my heart that “she’s the one” right away. So, on that fateful test drive day, I am not sure how I felt about the car, but I knew that this would be the girl I would want sitting next to me while I was driving, for the rest of my life.

We kept that car for 15 years, and boy what a car it was. We moved multiple houses in it, made quite a few long trips on it and this was the car in which my daughter came home after she was born. As she grew older, she learnt all the songs on the CDs that played in the car and that is how I secretly got my Gen-Z daughter to learn and love my genre of music.

As our old car turned fourteen, we decided to look for a replacement. I took my wife again, for multiple test drives, to choose our next companion. My wife would jokingly tell her friends to visit us on weeknights because we had booked our weekends for test drives. We decided it should be an automatic, preferably a sedan and it should be comfortable for long journeys.

After test driving the VW Vento, we decided that this was the car for us. Since it was way above our budget, we started earnestly looking for a used Vento. A couple of trips to Chennai later, we located one at a Mercedes showroom. It was white with a black top, and I instantly loved the way it looked. The car had the famed (or notorious) 7-speed dry clutch DSG and it was great to drive. Except, there was a faint whine and hiss from the diesel engine while accelerating during the test drive. I asked the technicians to see if the engine needed any repairs and told them we would take it if the engine was ok. The mechanics there told us to give them a few days to get the engine checked and promised to get back to us.

Since we were in Chennai, we did go to one other dealer and unfortunately, he did not have a Vento. He however asked us to test drive the Skoda Rapid diesel automatic which was lying in the showroom. We grudgingly agreed and drove just 3 km when the fuel ran out. After waiting for a while, someone came and filled some diesel and we then drove a bit within Chennai. It had beige interiors, quite comfy leatherette seats and drove like the Vento. We were not sure because it was “Skoda” and went back home disappointed.

After some weeks of waiting and not having found an ideal used Vento, our second dealer called us again and asked us if we had decided on the Skoda Rapid. The Vento we had seen did have injector issues and the mechanics at Mercedes advised us against buying it. After a lot of thinking and deliberations, we offered a price much lower than the asking price of the Skoda Rapid and left it at that. Surprisingly, the dealer called back a couple of days later and said that the deal was on.

I admit that with this car, I never felt the emotion that “she’s the one.” However, one morning my wife, daughter and I found ourselves on a train to Chennai, signed the papers and loan agreements and drove out with a 3-year-old Skoda Rapid. The 130 km drive back to Vellore on the busy Chennai-Bengaluru highway was nerve-wracking. It was my first experience driving an automatic, long-distance.

This car behaved differently from my petrol hatch, and I constantly felt the need to touch the gear shifter involuntarily. That first drive made me fall in love with the car and we clocked thousands of kilometres over the next five years. Its low-end torque, lightning-fast transmission, fantastic brakes and planted feel at triple-digit speeds were simply marvellous.

However, just as the Odo crossed 70 K, it started giving us grief in the form of timing belt wear, coolant line leaks, injector problems and lastly DSG electronic board issues. I spent an additional 90 K on parts and service over and above the routine 13 K annual service of the car over the 5 years we owned that car. Although my wife and I loved the car, we decided it was time to give it up. By then we had sold our old Wagon-R and my daughter was the one who was most stricken to see it go. All her childhood memories of long journeys were in that car.

So, another round of test drives started and my “One” started rolling her eyes when I suggested going on TDs every weekend again. She accompanied me on a few of them and this time we started looking for a petrol SUV. After doing the rounds, we test drove the Skoda Kushaq and decided “she’s the one”. We got the Ambition model sans the sunroof and wireless charging. I loved the 1.0 L turbo TSI, the slick torque converter, the inimitable crystalline LED projectors and the fantastic Skoda Audio system.

I wouldn’t say it is more comfortable than the Rapid, but it has good seats, a great driving position and a responsive motor. We did compromise on the boot, however, while moving from a sedan to this SUV. It’s now 2 years old and a great car for long rides. The interiors are an upgrade from the Rapid, the steering column is slick and controls way better. Apple CarPlay and mood lighting was a welcome addition. It’s nearly 30K on the Odo today and the car has remained reliable till date.

A year back we moved our house and that was when I started looking for a fuel-efficient hatch to commute to work. I decided to look for an EV and test drove the Tiago EV, and the MG Comet in our town. Both had their positives and many faults, and I almost zeroed in on the Tiago EV. However, I wanted to test drive the Citroen EC3 before saying yes to the Tiago.

Since there was no Citroen showroom in town, we made another trip to Chennai and reached the one at OMR, Chennai one morning. I drove the car through the busy Chennai streets and although it lacked the bells and whistles of other cars in its price bracket, I just knew “she was the one.” The instant feeling of space, easy drivability, fantastic suspension, a great boot and a spare wheel scored much higher on our wish list of things we needed from a car than anything else.

A month later a new Citroen eC3, “Feel” variant was driven all the way to Vellore by a driver from the dealership. It reached home at 1:00 am one night and has been with us for the last 4 months. Crossing 7K on the Odo this month, the car is a pleasure to drive. Silent, effortless, and torquey, “she’s the one” for all city drives.

As I cleaned off the dust from both my cars last weekend, I cannot help but remember the many times I have felt the same emotion wash over me as I chose a car to bring home. Although I felt it so many times, nothing compares to the time when the OR nurse handed over my newborn daughter to me. She wasn’t crying as I cradled her and just as I looked at my little one’s eyes and her little fingers wrapped around my finger, I knew in my heart, “She’s the one.”

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