At this point of time when I am writing this review I have covered almost 10K kilometers in my Beat car. Even though this is my first car, this is the 3rd in my family and I have been driving cars for almost 16-17 years now.
This is a must read for all the prospective Beat buyers. Please read it in full before buying Beat.
I bought my car Chevrolet Beat LT petrol on Feb 2013 so its 1 year and 2.5 months old. The car looks great and futuristic(this is the reason General Motors have given it a makeover after a very long time since its initial launch) from both the outside and the inside. The interior space is manageable considering its small exterior dimensions. The ride quality is pretty good though sometimes it gets wobbly due to its tall boy design. The speedometer and the digital tachometer with the digital screen looks very nice along with the blue illumination on the center dashboard, especially in the night. The climate control display also adds to this overall blue interior illumination and makes for a very pleasant sight. Looking at all this makes you feel proud of the car. The door pads that makes the interior of the door is pretty fat making for a good insulator and avoiding quite a bit of outside noise. Compared to its competitors I can say this car insulates outside noise better.
This being all the good about the car now let me come to the bad part of the car.
Mileage:
To start with the milage is below average for a 1.2l car. Compared to its competitor it is very poor. I am getting around 11 in the city and around 15 on the highways with the aircon on all the time. This is very low for a car of its size and capacity. With the aircon off I can expect an increase of 1-2 kmpl but still that is low when the comparison is at around 15 for the city and 20 for the highway. We also own a honda city in our family and I have personally driven it from Mysore to Bangalore and this car has amazed me with a mileage of 21 kmpl, this again with the aircon on and the same thing I repeated with Beat and it returned 15.5kmpl. I would also like to point that the pickup of my Beat is set to fuel economy mode. ie. the pick is tuned for better milage and not for fast acceleration.
Driving Position:
The most important drawback of this car is the driving position. The main reason for this is that all the 3 pedals are awkwardly placed. What I mean is the accelerator, brake and the clutch are very high from the floor. This makes for a very uncomfortable driving position. This is not evident in a test drive as we drive it for a short time. You would probably notice it if you are already aware of it. What this does is gives you a back pain especially to the left side of your back as you will be controlling the clutch from your left leg. On long drives this is even more evident. My advice to all those who want to buy this car is to first check this, drive the car for a longer distance and notice your back during your drive. If you feel uncomfortable then DO NOT BUY THIS CAR. I have tried many different things like adding a pillow on the seat(even though I am 5’10", this puts you in a better position as you are now in a raised position and your legs are almost in the 90 degree angle.) but still this does not make a huge difference. I even tried adding some hard packaging material below the pedals to reduce the gap between the car floor and the pedals. This again made everything a little better. The worst part of this is that the company service guys say they are aware of this problem but they cannot do anything. (The new Beat is now equipped with a seat height adjuster so you can avoid the pillow but it still is painful driving long distances). Please check this point when you test drive Beat and you will notice what I am saying.
The Obstructive A Pillar:
The A pillar, which is the pillar holding the roof and the front windscreen, is pretty big for a car of its size and this can completely block a 2 wheeler thats coming from your right out of your sight.
Very Poor Speaker Quality:
Buying a top end car you would expect a good audio system but this is surely going to disappoint you in Beat as the speakers provided with the car is of very poor sound quality.
Aircon Controller Position:
The climate control rotary switches are positioned in such a bad place on this car that if your co-passenger is a little stout and trying to move his/her leg then the aircon gets in their way and this tends to change the speed of the aircon. This can get very very annoying at times. This is surely something the company had to have thought about in the design testing phase of the car.
Climate Control Display:
The display of the climate controller gets pretty hot when you are running the car for a long time. Not sure of any impact, because I have not had any from that but its not good.
Boot
The boot space is adequate but the side cladding in the boot eats up quite a lot of space into the free space and leaves you with wanting more. The loading space.ie. the opening is also not so good and this does not allow you to store much in the boot.