Volkswagen Vento. Review on Volkswagen Vento

I was looking for a car around 10 lakh price point. I was not willing to spend more. I have been using Honda City for last 5 years so that was the standard for comparison. I was looking for hasslefree driving expert and comfort of a well-made sedan. Fuel efficiency was at the top of my agenda, as I was strictly looking for a petrol vehicle. All said and done, the noise level and vibration of the diesel engines was something that I am not able to put up with. Also the subsidy on diesel constantly under threat I did not want to pay more to get a diesel car with all that entails.

In spite of profusion of the new models in market, I had very few choices with this budget. Ford Fiesta, Honda City, Fiat, Chevrolet optra, Volkswagen Vento, Tata Safari Dicor, Scorpio, Hyundai Verna and if I was willing to stretch my budget by a lakh or two, Toyota Corolla altis.

Since I was not really inclined towards SUVs/MUVs, Safari and Scorpio were not really the choices. I hate to drive these monster machines. Parking, driving in the city traffic and lugging all that weight for a single person to drive is little too much. I had also heard lots of stories about Safari, which made it a non starter. I was not sure about the long time future of Fiat hence that went out of door. Hyundai Verna I disliked the looks. Toyota corolla sales people were very snooty, so I could not take a test ride.

After lot of search on the net considering my priorities, the choices left were Honda City and Volkswagen Vento. My City was a DTSi and I was getting enviable average on that car. If it were not for the series of nagging problem that had started surfacing I would not have even thought of changing City.(I had to replace the front wheel bearings at about 40000 km. Which was a surprise, as I had never faced such problem with M800 and Esteem which I had used earlier. They were much more rugged cars. Then there was suspension work. I never spent such amounts on maintenance on any of my earlier cars.)

I had read lot of negative stuff about Vento. The rude behaviour of dealers, the horrors in craftsmanship and technical issues in the car. My experience was entirely different.

My reception at the dealer Volkwagen Pune West could not have been better. I got the test ride in about 5 minutes. For both the the petrol and diesel variants. The diesel car is awesome, the acceleration, the absence of noise in the cabin. In addition to my prejudices about diesel engine I was not ready to wait for 6 months of delivery, otherwise I might have gone for the diesel vehicle. I got all my doubts about the car that I had read about on net. Got convincing answers from Mr Aditya Joshi, the sales officer.

When I compared feature for feature, vento highline offered me many more things than Honda City at that price point. And I did not want to drive another city for next 5 years.

The delivery was given as promised. No repeated postponements as reported in some of the reviews. The vehicle was in perfect condition. No trailing wires beneath the chassis or vehical moving to left or cracked windshield as reported in some other reviews. The sales officer dilligently explained operations of the vehicle and all the controls, when I was impatient to go out with the new toy. I did not encounter a single unpleasant experience through out the sales process.

I am extremely happy with the car. However I will cover the improvement areas first.

The driver armrest is a ergonomic design failure. It does get in the way when you are doing fast gear changes. Mostly it ends up getting pushed up. However on highway driving, where the gear changes are not very frequent, it does not intrude as much.

The rearview mirror is smaller than optimum, it does not give as wide a view as the City one does. It also does not have the second position to cut glare in the night as City has. That is something that can be rectified without any major expenditure of money.

The big hump in the rear is going to be uncomfortable for the middle passanger in the rear. VW guys explained that the hump is a feature to give more airodynamic flow in the bottom of the car. I was not really convinced about it. I do not know whether engineering considerations should outweight the occupant's comfort. But it was not a deal breaker for me as we rarely have 5 people in the car.

The music system is capable of playing CD/MP3 disks and has radio. That's it. I don't know whether it is a cost issue or VW engineers have a design workshop beyond moon. The manual says that there is an Aux input in the glove compartment, but I did not find any. The sound quality however is very good.

Other than the points mentioned above, the car is a dream to drive. The suspension is little stiffer as compared to city. So the speed bumps make their presence felt, but the gentle oscillatory swaying that I experienced in City is absent here. On normal roads the ride is significantly smoother as compared to city.

With 105 PS power I never experienced any situation where I felt I needed more power. The cabin and the glasswork is designed in such fashion that the exposure to the external light is kept to minimum and the heat absorption within the cabin is very low. I took a 2 hour drive in the hot march sun yesterday and we were cool as cucumbers. In city, the front glass design as well as position of the seats has such a combination that the front seats get exposed to sunlight directly. The climate control works according to expectations and some.

The steering is very light and true with no noticeable understeer or oversteer. The acceleration is very smooth. I did not require the downshift for acceleration to overtake, as was commented in the reviews. But to be honest I never tried to overtake at 160KMPH the vehicle that was driving at 155 KMPH.

The LED information system is very useful. It monitors about 1000 parametrs;-). If you want to monitor the fuel consumption you can do it as you drive. With about 200 km of driving, the long term average came out to about 14.4 KM, with a half and half mix of city and highway driving. That was one of my concern areas as I had read on the net that for one particular individual the average was only about 8.

The road visibility to the front is excellent. The ORVMs are little small(as they are in City). In my Wagon R VX the ORVMs are huge. That is something that VW might want to look at. The adjustment of mirrors from inside is as smooth as City. The headlight beam adjustment is smoother in Vento and is stepless.

It is very quiet inside the cabin. To my non expert ears, it is even quieter than city. The AC fan is also quieter than City. The build appears very solid. There is noticeable thunk when the doors are closed. The plastics inside appear to be good quality. Only time will tell.

The spare wheel given is smaller than the regular 4 wheels. The reason for that is to make sure that the spare wheel is used as a spare wheel, and to avoid rotation of the wheels indiscriminately.

The alloy wheels and 15" wheels do give a cushioned ride. The boot space is cavernous. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I liked the sleek looks of vento than the slightly old fashioned bulky shape of the new city.

Will update the review after I have driven some more and pulled off few stunts.