MG Astor in peak Bengaluru traffic: Test drive & observations

While the Astor robot is cute, it is sluggish and was not able to respond many times.

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Test drove the Astor today, it was a very good experience at the showroom. Since this was the start of the week, the showroom had very few people, this gave us a good amount of time to spend with the car. I already knew the features of the car so told SA that I will reach out if I need any help and in the meantime if she can arrange a test drive.

Spent some quality time in the car with my son and a friend, the car was silver-coloured.

1. The front grill looks awesome!! The Interiors though are the star of the package, the red does not look Gawdy, and looks nice, but it will outgrow very quickly, and better to pick the standard colours IMO, the fit and finish as said before is Sublime. This car punches above its weight.
2. The front is well designed with all buttons feeling premium, and a nice touch of having a cut out near ICE for co-passenger to hold on to.
3. The touch screen is very responsive and of very good quality, the menus area is laid out perfectly, and the sound quality is very good.
4. The front though felt a little lesser in space compared to Vento, which in itself feels cramped in front of other cars in the segment.
5. I stepped into the showroom after spending some time with XUV 700, the sunroof on this felt much better, maybe because we sit closer to the sunroof, compared to XUV.
6. Sunroof inner cover is translucent and lets light in, would have preferred if it was opaque so we can filter out the light from outside completely like a normal roof.
7. The Astor robot is cute, but is sluggish and was not able to respond many times, need some more work for sure.
8. Son loved the car a lot and picked it over the XUV 700 (He is 7 years old, so I guess it was just the robot and Sunroof that had him stumped)
9. Test drive was good and I drove it for around 10-12 km, engine starts off nicely, with hardly any vibrations felt.
10. The view from the driving seat is very good, and I hardly had to adjust the driving position. The engine is peppy and gear shifts are good, the car builds up speed nicely and outside noise is well insulated. I touched 80+ a couple of times and it was effortless, this will be an easy and good car to drive in the city. The ADAS options were switched on, but then I really don't know how well or lack of their operation in such a short ride. I did not try to pull any stunts too as it was peak Bangalore traffic.
11. The point listed in point 6 again came into play and since it was sunny, I could feel the heat filter in, would have been good to have an opaque blind.
12. AC worked well and kept the cabin cool, even with point 11 in play. The AC vents look very premium.
13. The speedometer is well laid out and looks awesome, clear and crisp display to boot.
14. Suspension seems to be tuned on the softer side, would be interesting to see how this behaves at high speed on the Highway.
15. The steering modes are nice to have but do not make much of a difference at least on low speeds, the steering feels nice to hold and weighs up well on default settings itself. It felt really good after being extremely disappointed by XUV 700 steering.
16. I did not sit in the back seat, but seeing we are a family of three, it should be OK, as the main occupant, the little one, did not complain of anything.
17. The boot space is decent, and the parcel tray is given by default.
18. Wireless Android Auto and Car play is missing, Auto-Dimming IVRM is missing, Ventilated Seats is Missing. Competition gets all this, the latter two are available with hector and should have been included with Astor, maybe they wanted to differentiate Astor and Hector. I am guessing we will soon get all these features in Astor and Hector will get ADAS.

All in all, I was left pretty impressed with the car, but I again echo the sentiments above, except for some new features my Vento is still doing really well, and it will be tough to consider this an upgrade. This though felt better to me than XUV 700, if I discount the extra pair of two seats and obviously the sheer size of XUV, which actually works against it in Bangalore.

We then stepped into hector and it feels so much premium in itself, my Son now wants me to buy the hector (A seven-year-old example in play), I will TD Hector soon and see how it fares, for now, let's see how MG prices the Astor, Keep it below Creta and Seltos by 50 thousand rupees and this car will sell really well.

Also a special shout out to the experience at MG showroom, it felt great the SA was well informed and let us have our time with the car. She was also happy to run and fetch prices for Hector when she knew we stepped in primarily for Astor. Kudos to such customer service and more power to MG, they should focus on this aspect which is a huge positive, then spend energy on trying to make people believe that they are brit.

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