My Tryst with Cars. Review on General Tips on Buying a Car

This is not a review on any car and is also not any advise in a direct sense. In fact it’s a tribute to my friend Spike who has recently

posted a review on the Honda Civic! These are just random collection of thoughts on the various cars that I have driven and owned.

My Tryst with cars started when I was pretty young, in school to be precise. My father had brought his first car, a Standard Herald. Those were the days of the Ambis and the Fiats and in spite of being such a conservative man, what prompted him to buy this one, I could never figure out. But it was a blessing in disguise. He was never so protective of it as he would have been had he bought an Amby, or so I assume. Now don’t ask me the reason for this logic, as I really haven’t thought about it that hard. But that gave me a chance to drive it and learn at quite an early stage. I first started taking it from him on the highways, where there was not much maneuvering or turning involved and then when his confidence grew, he started giving it to me in the city as well. I was also helped by the fact that my mother could never learn to drive very well, but whenever my father went to teach her, I would accompany them and keep a keen ear out on whatever he said.

When the first Maruti 800 arrived it was like a breeze. I really cannot describe the feeling that I got when I drove it for the first time. By that time, I had driven the Amby, Fiat, and the Diesel Geeps that used to be very popular during those days. But oh boy, the Maruti 800 was just another thing. The people who are from the later generations, and drove Maruti or higher cars right from the beginning can never understand this feeling that I got driving this little beauty for the first time. There was no engine noise, no difficulty in changing gears, and no difficulty climbing hills, overtaking other lesser vehicles or doing anything else on the road. This soon became the new status symbol, and the world of cars would never be the same in India ever again. A new era had begun, a new generation had evolved…

I drove my 800 for almost 12 years. Through thick and thin of life it served me well. Our cost of purchase of this vehicle was a mere Rs 60, 000 at that time. The actual company price was 40K and we paid a premium of 20K to avoid the waiting period. And when I sold it after a period of 12 years I actually got 42K for it! That’s called value for money. By that time the Zen had already been introduced and I used to drool over it. It was several notches better than the Maruti 800, and was bigger and more powerful. Even though the Esteem or Maruti 1000(don’t remember exactly which one it was) was available at that time but it had a different kind of an image then and I did not consider buying it. The Zen was the dream then. It was fun to drive, had a powerful ac, and its inside space seemed to be worthy of a king.

However the dream of the Zen was relatively short-lived. Very soon after I bought the same, Santro and Matiz were launched with MPFI engines, which made other cars, seem like ancient. It was then that I realized that when it comes to technology and cars, there’s no permanent love. When I took a test drive of the Santro, I realized that I had made a very ill timed purchase. However having bought a car, I could hardly change it so soon and somehow reconciled to driving the Zen for another couple of years. But I must say here that having got over the initial shock of not having purchased an MPFI engine car, I never had any kind of problem with the Zen. It was a superb car and serves me very well even today after completing 10 years.

But after a few years of buying the Zen, I thought it was time to get a car with an MPFI engine. However by this time several other cars had come into the market and the bigger saloons had become affordable to the Indian executives. At this time I decided to go for one of the bigger cars instead of choosing between the Santro and the Matiz that I had missed during my earlier purchase. There was the by now become old warhorse, the Esteem, Corsa from Opel, Accent, and also the Ikon from Ford. That was the entire range available in the market then. I only considered the Ikon and the Aceent. Esteem had become too old a model and had lost its appeal. The Corsa seemed too heavy and small to appeal to me. And between the Accent and the Ikon, the latter seemed to be the sportier of the two, the more compact in build and more a self-driven car. The higher stance of the Ikon also appealed to me, though it had not yet become so much of a craze then. I thus bought a 1.6L NXT fully loaded model of the IKON.

I must admit that I initially liked driving this car very much. Its engine was very powerful and the machine was a true Josh machine as the company called it. The dimming of the cabin light in theatre style, the music system with 4 speakers, the raw power of the engine, it was exhilarating. But after the first few years I realized that this was not a car that could be driven to work everyday, especially without a driver. It was difficult to maneuver in the city traffic and its engine RPM even at slow speeds were such high that one needed to brake very often even without the pedal being on the accelerator. Such a car is good for long drives on expressways but not very suitable for driving in congested city traffic. The result was that this soon became my wife’s’ shopping car and I reverted to my old Zen for commuting to and fro the office. Probably it was due to these faults that the company soon discontinued this model with 1600cc engine and only the 1300cc Flair remained.

Now that the Zen had served us for a good 10 years, and it was time to change it too. This time around we had realized that a small city car cannot be replaced with a big saloon and both have different clearly defined roles. But the only problem was that by now in today’s date there were several options available and choosing a car was not that simple anymore.

Among the choices were the very reliable cars Zen Estilo and the Wagon R from the most trusted maker of cars in India Maruti Udyog. But though these are reliable there is nothing exceptional about them anymore and other manufacturers have taken the sheen away. The Tata cars like Indica and also the Palio are not good enough to be considered with so many other reliable options being available. The Santro no doubt seemed like the best bet in this category and for our needs of a reliable and easily maneuverable city car. So we went and test-drove the Santro first, but alas found it not upto our expectations. Even after a 10 minutes test drive its AC did not cool the cabin sufficiently, the space for the rear passengers was too less if I was to feel comfortable driving with sufficient leg space, and also the bumps that one gets at the back seats were too much to bear. But this is supposed to be the best car in its category, so what do we do. We shall check out if its successor is worthy or not. So we went for a test drive in the I 10.