I bought the i10 at a time when most people didn’t know it existed. :-) When my wife and I decided to go for a car, we really didn’t know what to get. We had 3 things on our minds: 1) comfort for all passengers and the driver (ME!) 2) Good mileage, not wallet shrinking and 3) Decent to good pickup. We started by going to pretty much every dealership: TATA, Maruti, Chevrolet, and Hyundai. The final choices boiled down to Getz, Swift, or Santro... big surprise. I still wasn’t sure about what to do when one of my friends mentioned the i10. I actually thought it was "iten"... LOL... searched the web and came up with nothing.
On a trip to visit the in laws in Chennai, we went to the nearby Hyundai showroom and got our very first look at the car. It was nice, different from most cars and pleasing to the eye. We took it out for a test drive and the first and most significant thing I noticed was the placement of the gearshift. It is higher up than any other car (except maybe i20), and felt really really comfy. The hand would naturally fall right on top of it. It felt so much easier to shift repeatedly than any other car at the time. The car comes with electric power steering which is sooo smooth, the car practically turns by itself. I’m so used to it, I only have one hand on the steering wheel with absolutely no worries.
The ride was good, the pickup was good, the mileage seemed good (from the dealers info) and the deal clinching item was the driver comfort. We ended up buying a i10 1.1 Litre Magna ( is now called Sportz in the Kappa variant) from Trident Motors, Indiranagar, Bangalore. The car was unavailable in Kappa at that time, so we got the irde engine.
I’ve driven over 12, 000 km. till date without any major issues. Most of the traveling was in city, with only one short trip of 500 km to Thirupathi. There was a front brake caliper pin loose which kinda used to freak me out. Every time I went over a hump or through a pothole, there was a noise from the front of the car. At the very next service, the issue was resolved by replacing the pin (on warranty). This is the only problem till date.
To be honest, my relative has a Kappa and I feel that I haven’t lost much getting the older irde model. Only time will tell how right or wrong I may be. Overall, I would recommend this car to anyone. It’s very comfy, good mileage, good pickup and so far has proven to be very reliable. Hope this helps. If any of you have any specific questions, please feel free to ask in the comment section. UPDATE: 20000 km on the odometer and nothing to complain of. Got a few scratches, a bump above the left front tire and nothing else. Have been taking it out on the Highways and a better ride I have yet to experience. So glad I bought this car.