After a whole lot of research and study I decided to go for i10 magna - as a second car, mainly to be driven by the lady of the house - who learned driving only 2 years back in our old jalopy of a maruti 800 (1988). My initial interest was with A-star, going by its BABY FACED looks and my other consideration was SPARK. Never got to drive the latter but after driving the A-star, which I did twice I realized the interiors tend to make you claustrophobic and for a short driver the seating was not the most ideal one, it showed excellent stability but the driving experience was nothing great, my old jalopy - the maruti could beat it on this front. Many of my friends recommended the spark, and there were quite a few numbers on the road, but it was more so because of its cheaper price I reckoned rather than for the quality or driveablility, so I never thought of even test driving the spark. I had tried the i10 ERLX when the i10 was launched and other than for its compact nature and good seating and driving comfort, it didn’t appear much different from the Santro.
But the surprise came when I finally thought of giving the i10 Kappa a try - the local MGF Hyundai guys met me as I went with one of my colleagues to take delivery of his i20 and the chap who did the rituals for my friend immediately latched onto me when he realized that I was looking around for a second car. He brought the car for a test drive - both my wife and myself had a trial. In fact I wanted her to be comfortable with it - so I made her drive it first and then I tried my luck at the wheels and I found the toy like compact hatchback a truely thrilling buggy to drive - it was just rearing to go on most gears including the third and the AC being on never appeared to perturb the performance of the pocket sized car - one could realize that the nearly 80 BHP engine of a KAPPA was just firing all guns to keep the buggy surging around smoothly. The gear shift was excellent with it being integrated onto the dashboard console. The seating was excellent with it affording a superb view of the road ahead with the short bonnet. The interiors being beige and brown the car though small had a spacious feel to it - yet spacious enough for a small family. I never really liked the looks of the i10 personally, but with the huge number of cars on the road I started accepting it as a very popular car after santro. The worst part is the small strut like wheels that the company provides, I had an initial desire to change them over to wider tyres to improve its looks and stance, but then a few people dissuaded me from spending nearly 20000 rupees to do this change. And I realized after buying the car that these small wheels never made the driver feel insecure and the NOTHING MUCH TO BRAG about sort of mileage the car affords doesnt really allow a sensible guy to do the tyre-alloy wheels switch. If I had done so I am sure I would have been cutting down the already low mileage by another kilometer a litre or so. But for the city drive it is an excellent vehicle - one shouldn’t worry too much about the mileage, because I firmly believe that with reasonable driving skills and without a lead foot the fuel consumption would come down as the car covers more distance on the odometer. Mine has covered just over 1000 kms in 4 months with just about 5 to 10 kms of driving to be done daily on it.
Being a light car one should be careful speeding around in this buggy - as the power to weight ratio is quite on the high side and with our sort of road conditions one can have a lot of mishaps if one is not on the careful side of driving. We went for a FLAME RED i10 - and each time I see it I feel it is like a toy car, very easy to wash it daily and the paint job is also commendable, considering the fact I own a Fiat Linea diesel - emotion pack ( I feel the paint job is much better than the premium car that I own ).
So I would recommend this car to anyone who is on the look out for a small city car looking out for a zippy buggy but one who is not really going to keep peeping into the odometer worrying about the fuel that the car consumes. Even this factor might change as the car makes its 3000 to 4000 kms mark that is the break in period of any vehicle before one can determine its real mileage.