My Hyundai Xcent: 7 years & 35,000 km ownership review

The fuel efficiency of the car is nothing to write about and I think the torque converter gearbox is the main culprit behind it

BHPian padmrajravi recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

The Xcent came home on 11th December 2014 and it has now been with my family for almost 7 years and 35000 km.

Likes

• One of the few graceful integrations of boot in a compact sedan.
• Proper torque converter gearbox.
• The ownership experience has been hassle-free. Other than two ABS sensor replacements in the first year, no unscheduled service center visits till now.
• Decent ride quality.
• Light steering and controls. The car is very beginner-friendly.
• Perfectly sized city car.

Dislikes

• Poor fuel economy compared to segment rivals.
• No speed-sensitive locking doors.
• Inconsistent brake bite during the first five minutes of a cold start.
• Narrow second row. The middle passenger is a squeeze.

Buying Process

The car was bought in Dec 2014 without a test drive after evaluating the segment rivals only based on the website specifications and online reviews. After selling my grandmother's Mark 1 ambassador somewhere in the 1990s, we did not have a car for a long time. So this was the first new car at our home after a gap of more than 50 years. The reason behind it was my Dad's reluctance to drive cars after he got into a mishap somewhere in his early 20s. His reasoning was that there was a big probability of the driver having to spend the rest of his life in mental agony in spite of all precautions that can be taken. I never agreed with him then and now after a decade of driving experience, I see his point. Once I and my sister grew up, we started pestering him for a car and he finally gave in, on the condition that he will never take the driver seat and it has to be three of us who will do the driving duty.

And thus began the search for a reliable car under 10 lakhs. The requirements were as below.

• Has to be a sedan. Dad said sedans were safer than hatchbacks since there was a big chance that we will get hit from behind.
• Has to be automatic. Again my Dad's choice. I wanted a manual, but he was adamant automatic was the future.
• Has to be petrol.
• Should have two airbags and ABS.

Back in 2014, this meant our shortlist had four cars - Tata Zest, Suzuki Swift Dzire, Hyundai Xcent, Honda Amaze. I remember Dad, me, and my sister watching this video umpteen times before making the decision.

We decided that Xcent SX (O) AT was going to be it. The decision-making process can be summarized as below.

Zest was ruled out immediately for being an AMT. Dzire was ruled out for the odd boot shape. The final competition was between Amaze and Xcent. I remember calling the sales associates from both Hyundai and Honda. The Amaze was slightly expensive with the total on-road price slightly above 9 lakhs and the Xcent SX(O) AT was 8.75 lakhs on road. Xcent came with a host of features like Bluetooth, Steering mounted controls, etc and that titled the scale in favor of Xcent.

The car arrived at the dealer's yard on Dec 8th and this was my first look at it.

The Hyundai SA was kind enough to deliver it to our home as none of us had driven an automatic car till then. Even though all three of us were license holders, we had very little experience behind the wheels. My mom was a good driver in the ambassador days and but hadn't driven for a decade. So the Xcent had the L sticker right from day one. In fact, the Xcent had the L sticker most of its life till a year back since one of us was always learning.

Driving Experience

The 1.2-liter petrol is capable of 82 PS of power at 6000 RPM. Since all of us were newbie drivers then, we never felt the lack of power. The engine is very refined and even now at traffic signals, I sometimes wonder whether it is actually on. The 4 speed AT box is well-tuned for city driving but tapers out after 80 KMPH. After the initial period, I pushed it regularly at expressway speeds. While it is very silent and refined at those speeds, getting to those speeds takes a long time. To its credit, it does all this silently and without making much fuss. There have been numerous occasions where I got lost in thoughts while maintaining 80 KMPH and it was at illegal speeds when I came back to my senses. Even at high speeds, the wind noise is well controlled and the cabin is very silent.

The most annoying thing about the gearbox is that, as soon as you lift off the accelerator, it goes into a neutral kind of mode and starts coasting. In Kerela's winding roads where you have to quickly make up ground when you notice an opening, this behavior costs valuable seconds. My Hexa AT never used to do this and was always ready to go at the slightest dab of the accelerator. Interestingly, my Fortuner AT box behaves the same way as the Xcent. I guess it is just the way the gearbox is programmed.

In kick-down mode, even though the AT shifts a cog down, it takes a bit of time to gather speed. Because of the coasting tendency, there is absolutely no engine braking, and the only way to get some engine braking is using the manual mode. But the manual mode is slow and on most occasions, you will have to brake anyway while waiting for the gearbox to execute the downshift command. To be fair, I started noticing all these quirks only after I got my Hexa AT. Till then Xcent's AT appeared fine to me and the ease of driving in this car was what inspired me to let go of the manual gearbox when it was time to replace my Cruze.

One of the quirks with Xcent is the nonlinear brake behavior in the first few kms of the drive. The brakes are extremely sharp after a cold start and the slightest touch in the first few km brings to a complete stop. Till my sister and mother started driving Xcent, this was always blamed as my fault. Now after 7 years and with both of them driving the Xcent, everyone has gotten used to this quirk.

The Xcent has a very mature suspension that strikes a good balance between low-speed rides and the sane high speeds it is capable of. The ground clearance is high compared to sedans and is almost in cross-over territory. I am yet to have an instance where the Xcent bottomed out in Kerala roads. The Xcent's feather in the cap moment was when my wife preferred it over our Hexa for her first-trimester hospital visits saying she preferred Xcent's predictable jolts over some kind of floating effect that Hexa had. I do get her point though. While the Hexa does a good job of extremely bad roads, Xcent strikes a good balance and behaves in a predictable manner.

The car's mileage is nothing to write about and I think the torque converter gearbox is the main culprit behind it. I have had situations where the Xcent returned 8 KMPL. I have also had cases where it got up till 19 in expressway drives. Since there is no mileage display in the console, you have to rely on the back of hand calculations to get an idea about the mileage. In my calculation, it averages around 12-13 KMPL in my office drives that include 50% city traffic.

At 7 years, close to 36k kms, this is how it looks.

The scratch in the fender was a gift from the notorious Kerala RTC.

The right side is more or less scratch-free. But that is also partly due to the com-paint spray.

The front view. The design is pleasing unlike Aura, which Hyundai experimented with.

Even now, I prefer Xcent's boot integration compared to that of the Dzire and Aspire.

The rear seats. They are very narrow and with a child seat, only three including the driver can be accommodated.

Rear legroom. It is nothing to write about, but none of us is very tall. So even with it adjusted to our comfortable driving position, it has enough space in the rear.

The dashboard was well specced by 2014 standards. But in the current touch screen age, it does look outdated.

The instrument cluster misses the all-important mileage display. It displays some info like the average speed that is not relevant to anyone.

Niggles and Service Experience

I consider this car to be a reliable one. Perhaps that could be due to the fact I did not exactly have a niggle free experience with my Hexa and Cruze. Compared to them, the Xcent feels very reliable. In the initial days of ownership, I faced the steering over-assist issue twice. This is a common problem with Grand i10s and Xcent's of similar vintage and is well documented in the forum. The symptom is loose steering that has lost all its weight. The steering will still work, but it will be extra light and when you face it for the first time, it is a scary experience. It goes away on its own after a restart. I faced this problem twice, but I don't remember it happening after the second instance which was somewhere at the end of the first year. The recommended solution is an EPS controller replacement, but I never got to that stage and it never came back in the last 6.5 years.

Very few Hyundai ownerships are complete without ABS sensor replacements. The first ABS sensor warning light came in towards the end of the first year. Hyundai replaced it under warranty. The light came up once more immediately after the warranty period and I paid 3000 Rs to replace the ABS sensor during one of the yearly services. Fortunately, this sensor is usually in stock at the service center.

Somewhere in the fifth year, the exhaust sound became different and on the investigation during the yearly regular service, it was found that the silencer has rusted. This can be blamed on my frequent drives to the drive-in beach and not washing the underbody immediately after. Silencer was replaced during that service for about 7k.

The car was always serviced at KVR Hyundai Calicut. The service experience has been very good till now thanks to the very knowledgable Mr. Akhil. I think Xaos636's Venue ownership thread also mentions his name. He is great to deal with and thanks to him, I have been spared of visiting the service center after the very first service. He stays nearby my home and picks it up once a year, does everything needed, and drops it home. The battery was changed at the 5-year mark proactively. The tires are still original. There haven't been any punctures till now. The compound has become hard and I plan to change it during this year's service.

The service cost in the first few years was 3k-4k per year. As of now, it has reached 6-7k per year. This is just because of the increase in labor and oil costs and not because of any part changes. The Xcent has not had any part replacements other than ABS sensors and the silencer till now.

Xcent's Moments

For the first few years of its life, the car was used very little. I was mostly away from home for my postgraduation and straight after postgraduation, I took up a job that required me to spend most of the time out of the country. So the Xcent was mostly used only for grocery runs and family functions. Whenever I was home, I used to take it for long drives, and even with that, the running was only about 4000 km for the first two years. In the second year, Xcent met with a minor accident when my mom reversed it into the garage wall while parking. This was how it looked.

It took 45K for it to be back on road.

The car met with an accident one more time when a Leyland Dost rear-ended it at a zebra crossing. This time the damage was 14k.

Since it was our first new car after a while, the Xcent was pampered well in the early part of its ownership. I have fond memories of the four of us spending the whole evening washing it whenever I came home for vacation. Two years after the Xcent came home, Dad left us suddenly and our little happy world came crashing down. When Calicut's first IT park became operational in 2017, I moved back home at the first opportunity. I started using the Xcent once or twice a week for my office drives. On one such day where I had taken the Xcent to the office, I came back to the multi-level parking lot to see this.

A snake royally resting on top of my car. I got some people to help and tried to get it away, but in all the chaos it went into the wheel well and disappeared. With no way to find it, we drove the car with the snake inside it to the ground floor and started searching. Eventually, a snake catcher from the forest department had to be called and he jacked up the car to find it hiding inside the suspension.

Some pictures from the Muzhapillangad drive-in beach.

At the 5-year mark in December 2019, Xcent was at 16k kms. In March 2020, Covid struck and when most other cars in the world were getting ready for long hibernation, Xcent got the shock of its life in being called up for duty. My sister who works with a PSU insurance company was classified as essential services personnel and was denied work from home after the first two months. With buses and trains not operating, she was forced to learn to drive. I give a lot of credit to Xcent's beginner-friendly controls for the ease with which she picked up driving. After a month of practice, she finally gathered enough courage to venture out alone for the 32km drive to the office with my Hexa as escort for the first day.

Since then the Xcent is her daily drive to the office and has been doing the 65 km round trip every weekday. In the last one and half years, it has run more than what it did in the first 5 years of its life.

Future Plans

All of us have an emotional attachment with this car and hence we want to keep this till the time government allows. For now, it is a great daily driver and my sister plans to take it to her office for the foreseeable future. The fuel consumption does bother her at times and she gets tempted by the advertisements for Tigor and Nexon EV. But it does not make sense to buy a new one just because of that. In any case, selling this car is not an option, so the new one will have to be the third car at home and we are not keen on it. Looking at what is happening with NGT, I hope they don't force us to scrap this after the 15-year mark.

I expect two major expenses in the near future. First is the infamous crank pulley bolt shearing off. I have been spared of this till now but this is a well-documented problem in the Hyundai quality issues thread. It happens to cars in the 25k to 35k km odometer range.

My trusted SA, Akhil says this issue is only with a specific batch and our Xcent will not have this problem. Since he himself owns a Grand i10, I am inclined to believe him. Fortunately, all incidents of this bolt till now have been while starting the car. I am yet to see a case where it broke in the middle of a run. I just hope, if, at all it breaks, it happens when my sister starts the car from home or office so that she does not get stranded on road.

The second expense that I foresee is an AC overhaul. Since the last year, the AC does not seem powerful and I suspect something is going wrong in the system.

Hopefully, it is nothing major and Xcent keeps running reliably for much more years to come.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.