Kia Seltos GTX+ Petrol replaces my 7-year-old Honda City

Creta N-line felt exactly the same way as Seltos. But the SA was a bit greedy and told that waiting period would be one month if I go with their insurance.

BHPian MalnadMansha recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

It's been a week since I got Imperial Blue Seltos GTX+ Petrol, and what a pleasant experience it has been so far! I keep finding reasons to drive it and every minute I am around it, I can't take my eyes off it!

To put some context into it, I was a proud owner of Honda City for 7 years. That was the first car I bought in 2017. I absolutely loved driving it every minute, both inside the city and on highways as well. Those who own a Honda car will vouch for that reliable, smooth engine with loads of power in 2nd and 3rd gears especially.

Even though I loved driving it, the Bengaluru traffic made me wish I had bought an Automatic transmission instead of a manual, since 2017 itself, when they started the dreadful white-topping of the ring road. I had to drive from Marathahallli to Manyata Tech Park, which is around 20 km one way every day. Those who have driven in this stretch during white-topping days would have known what a pain in the left foot it was! Since I switched companies later and the office was nearby, I didn't think of switching to an Automatic immediately, but kept visiting these Seltos, Creta, Taigun, Virtus, and Verna threads regularly and was going through all the reviews, niggles, pros, cons, etc.

After finishing watching almost all videos available on YouTube about facelift Seltos, I just thought now would be the right time to sell my car, since I may get a good resell value now and it will keep depreciating more once it crosses 8-9 years.

So I just went and took test drives of Seltos, Creta N-line, Taigun, and Verna.

The first car I took a test drive of, was Seltos itself, since I was already biased towards Seltos after so many positive reviews and ownership reviews here. I enjoyed the drive, understanding all the features and how it works during the TD. Even inside the city, I tried a few ADAS features like lane assist, forward collision, and reverse parking assist. The pick-up when turbo kicked in was tremendous. There was a little turbo lag initially, but I thought it was normal to feel it after driving a manual transmission NA engine for years.

I enjoyed the turbo kick-in of Verna, it had bigger boot space and rear seat room than City. But I wanted to try something different this time, rather than going for a Sedan again.

Taigun was very smooth and didn't observe any turbo lags in that awesome DSG engine. But the car felt like a hatchback from the inside and the rear seat felt very congested. Also, the lack of features and high maintenance costs made me keep it as the last option.

Creta N-line felt exactly the same way as Seltos. However the SA was a bit greedy and told me that the waiting period would be one month if I went with their insurance, otherwise, they can't promise anything and a standard waiting period of 3 months would apply! The lack of some features when compared to Seltos, like fog lamps, adjustable ambient lights, and rain-sensing wipers to name a few, along with SA's behavior made me tilt further towards Seltos!

I was still not sure when to finally make this leap. Out of curiosity, I just posted an ad on the FB marketplace to sell the City and to my surprise, around 25-30 people pinged me 2 of them came to see the vehicle on the same day within hours and both of them were interested, and one of them even paid the advance and booked it! Honda City has a great demand in the re-sale market!

Now finally the time had come to make a call, and we finalised on Seltos. I wanted to go for X-line, but my wife didn't like the Matte finish and she loved the gloss finish of Imperial Blue/Black. I also saw a few X-lines of Seltos and Sonet on the road during that week and some of them were not well maintained and looked very dull and faded. So felt that it needed thorough maintenance to keep it in pristine condition and I would miss out on only Heads-up display. We decided on GTX+ Imperial blue finally.

The SA from Epitome Kia Whitefield was very friendly and responsive. He resolved all our queries and assured us that he would get the new car delivered within 10 days. From here on, everything went so smoothly and so fast. Within a span of a few days, I went to do PDI at the stockyard.

I took the checklist from here and made sure everything was working fine. The car was manufactured in March and all the tyres were manufactured in January. One-touch-up down was added again from the March batch and voice commands to control the windows were also added.

A pic from PDI:

The time had come to bid adieu to the City, which didn't throw a single problem all the 7 years. Waves of nostalgia and sadness hit me when the buyer finally drove away!

Goodbye, my friend!

And as promised by SA, they were able to get the Car ready within 10 days. A quick tip for those who want better registration numbers for their cars: You can see the current running number series on the Parivahan site for all different RTOs. I was checking regularly what would be the approximate range of the number which I would get. I managed to get the number 0442. plus or minus two would have given me better numbers, but still this was better than other numbers running in other RTOs which were pretty plain like 7283, 3529, etc!

On the day of delivery, we went there at 5:30 pm and the car was glowing, waiting to be taken! I had opted for a boot mat, dual layer floor mat, visors, side garnish, bumper corner protectors, door edge guard, number plate bracket, and body cover.

The delivery experience was smooth. There was no discount provided, but they gave under-chassis coating from 3M free of cost. However, there was a very minor smudge/dent in the black plastic part below the boot. It may have been caused when they were cleaning it. It was very small and not an issue, but still, I made sure they took a photo of it and wanted them to address it and give an update soon.

Took the car to the temple, got the pooja done, and drove very slowly in the traffic to get used to the car's dimensions and constant beep alerts from the sensors.

Kept taking photos of it the next day, whenever I went out!

Within 2 days, I left the car at Detailing Street for pro-shield C series PPF coating. Got it back after 2 days.

Glowing after PPF:

I managed to drive for around 140kms so far and all of that within the city in traffic. The current mileage it shows is 9.2kmpl. Just love the easy and comfortable drives so far, switching between Eco and Normal modes. Showing the moon from inside the car to my little daughter through the panoramic sunroof made me appreciate the sunroof!

The SA guys said they can't resolve that minor dent on the plastic part since replacing it would be very costly and it is actually a very minor issue. So I asked them to give me a car perfume and dashcam installation for free, and they obliged. I bought a Viofo A229 plus dual channel dashcam and they installed it today. The clarity during daytime and even nighttime is great!

Some more posts regarding driving experience, and initial ownership experience to follow.

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