Easily the leader in this segment

After a lot of time pondering over “should I? or shouldn’t I?” I finally took the plunge and decide to indulge myself by buying a new car in 2008. Armed with a stack of the latest Car magazines & websites, I read through a ton of material and finally short listed a few cars that passed muster, viz: the Maruti SX4, Tata Indigo XL Classic and Honda City. Next thing was to visit the dealer showrooms and line up test drives.

 

I first took the Tata Indigo XL Classic for a spin. This was the petrol version and I found the car to have a cavernous interior. Rear legroom is fantastic and seen to be believed. Besides the car has numerous features that will appeal to a potential buyer such as height adjustable driver seats, twin Aircons, capable engine and overall great value for money pricing. On the downside the driving experience was a bit vague and the engine a tad noisy.

 

My next visit was to the Honda showroom and I saw the new “Anniversary” versions of the Honda City on display. The City remains a popular choice despite an onslaught of new cars in that category and holds its value very well. Interior quality is easily the best in class as is fuel efficiency. However, the driving experience is a less than desirable and I found myself shifting gears a lot more frequently due to the lower power. The steering is also extremely light making the car skittish during high speeds. The new “Anniversary” badges look good. Only two major drawbacks that I see in the Honda City is price and lack of features. Honda really needs to re-look at the India pricing especially since there are newer cars in the same category that are priced much much more compellingly. And the Honda City offers safety features such as ABS, Air Bags only in the high-end version that is priced even more steeply, practically taking the price to the next segment of Cars such as Toyota Corolla, Skoda Octavia, Hyundai Elantra, Honda Civic, et al.

 

My final stop was at the Maruti showroom to check out the SX4. The car is slightly bigger than the Honda City and definitely much taller. In fact ground clearance is awesome and that should work well for Indian roads. Styling is bold and the car does live up to the tag line “Men are Back”. Being a Maruti, support and dealer network is vast and spares should become more inexpensive over time. The car is simply loaded with features (Honda better watch out) and comes with ABS, Air Bags, in-built music system, immobilizer, steering mounted music controls, etc. Driving is great with the new M series engine though fuel efficiency could have been better. Steering has a tendency to become hard at high speeds but overall the car feels firmly planted and gives the feeling of driving a much bigger car. The instrument console looks great with red needles. The often quoted issues with this car, viz: poor rear visibility and uncomfortable rear middle seat are over exaggerated in my humble opinion. I got some great seat covers that have largely addressed the problem of the uncomfortable rear middle seat. As for rear visibility, I have installed a reversing camera. Besides the overall value proposition of this car far outweigh these minor issues. Pricing is fantastic and some of the features are not present even in the cars in the next segment (read Toyota Corolla, Skoda Octavia, Honda Civic, etc).

 

Almost immediately after returning the keys of the demo Maruti SX4 car back to the dealer, I made up my mind and booked the ZXi variant. While each of the other cars that I evaluated have their own merits, I found the Maruti Suzuki SX4 value proposition and overall driving experience to be definitely superior and hence my decision. I’ve taken delivery of my car and driven it for over 200 Kms already and have absolutely no reason to regret my decision. Cheers

 

Great Styling, Awesome features, SafetyLimited rear visibility