Hyundai Santro Xing eRLX

Bought a santro 2006-Duserah. My experience so far.

My budget permited a small car only. I was focussed on small car and fuel efficiency was not a criteria for selection. Excerpt from my small car evaluation experience...

1. Palio: Sales man said he can do a favour on me by giving discount as much as swift/santro. The car sucked and rattled everywhere. Salesman said, as the ’predelivery inspection is not done it rattles’. A new showroom car(Not a democar) in this condition was not acceptable.

   
   




2. Wagon R/ Alto: Don’t like the alto’s 800cc engine. WagonR looks suck, never visited the maruti showroom for these models.

   
   




3. Santro: Pretty OK in overall aspects as a city car. Cheap car and balanced. Looks bad but doesn’t suck.

   
   




4. Swift: Too good. I had a esteem, so know what this engine is capable already. In swift it’s even more refined, more responsive, more smooth. Handling and ride quality. It’s a Honda City in small cars. If this is so good why I didn’t buy it :-), it’s budget my dear. But, I still belive this is the best small car in INDIA yet. Take a testdrive and you will know why.........

   
   




5. Getz: I don’t know who buys it and why. The hyundai salesman was honest to admit that, only people who buy this is when they exchange santro for a better offering. I never testdrove it.

   
   




6. Indica Xeta: Milege was not my criteria, so ruled out stupid diesels/turbo. Xeta was good. Engine, space, power, refinement, ride everything was just great. I was most impressed after swift in small cars. Magazines have time again pointed out xeta might have long term reliability issue. The new car which I test drove, had the front fender plastic not properly finished. The speaker cover was not perfect circular in shape in the dash. Speedo console assembly had plastics misaligned. This got me thinking, if defective plastic pieces have made it to these places after going through the quality check, who knows, a defective valve might have made it to the engine!!! In manufacturing being 90% repeatable is not enogh. If out of 10cars only 1 car is defective, and I happen to own it then it will be a nightmare. Let other 9people celebrate, but I’ll be crying foul and fool aroun the service centre....

   
   

I got santro for 3.6Lakh/road at BHUBANESWAR. A/C, PS, front doors power windows, MP3 player included. Good specs for the price and car. It closed my presales activities.

Santro Experience:

There is one dealer at Bhubaneswar, UTKAL Hyundai and it sucks. I realised it later, and I observe half of BHUBANESWAR people these dayd buy from OSL Hyundai cuttack. So any orissa guy, be careful...

Car is ok types and delivers what it promises and to know details or specs or comparision with wagonr etc trust a professional auto magazine. I’ll only tell you my experience here.

1. I don’t think hyundai has sound engineering capability to back it’s product. The car I was delivered has white spots all over my bonet. When I use my nail, it goes off but there are close to thousand of them. Every week I target to remove few hundreds of them, so by the year end I should be finished with it

   
   




2. I had an maruti esteem earlier. So when I got this car, still esteem experience was with me. Santro engine is too slugish and can be compared to alto at most. They call it eRlx and what not, all that is gimic. In the first week ’My Santro tried to kill me, as I joined the mainroad and tried pulling on infront of a speeding truck’. But I was lucky to escape, and now I’m in truce with the car and don’t expect anything from it. It’s dishartening, remebering good old esteem days, but again beggers are not choosers...

   
   

Bad. Car was just washed and given to me. Somebody has made some permanet dirt mark on the carpet, though the footmats cover them well now. Half of the things the car guy promised was not given to me (Mobile charger, Car cover etc) and these things were written on the invoice. This is the reason I doubt the integrity of both the dealer and HYUNDAI??? If I run after them, they will give it, but I called up twice and for these silly things I can’t run after them forever.....The car was delivered to me without it even having correct tyre pressure of 27psi. It was around 20. So the dealership sucks.

Service Experience:

The car has already 1600km on it’s odo and sitting there at service stn. No problem yet, except the clutch is bit loose. Mileage is around 10 in city with A/C. Let’s hope it increases a bit after first servicing. I reached the service stn at 11am on satday, and the guy there said I can’t take your car in. He refused to give anything in writing, why he can’t take it in? He promised, that if I showup on sunday before 9am he will make sure that my car is attended to first. I asked him for an appointment, be it 9, 10 or whatever time he has convenience to. He was rude and plainly refused to give anything on writing. He said he promises orally that he will attend to my car if I come before 9am on sunday. Here I go again, and we call indians are civilized. We are not civilized, we need to learn a lot from the westerners. If britishers think, India never had a history and we just had a chronicle of events, thats correct. But at least, I have thrown my ego and started learning good stuffs from them...

SUMMARY:

Santro is a good city car, not very suitable for highways. Power has been sacrificed for mileage but I get 10KM/Ltr. After first service it might go up a bit. If you can spend 1lakh more, then swift is the definitive car you should buy. Hyundai is good, but not in the league of honda or suzuki (1. My friends 4year old zen has a sweeter engine, santro engine runs out of steam quickly and you have to change gear. 2. My paint job described earlier 3. My car tried to kill me is the testimony). So overall a good city car in the budget end.

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