Well the decision to buy a car is not an easy one... I bet most of the members/visitors of mouthshut reading my review right now will agree. Letme tell you that the review is more related to how I boiled down to Esteem Vxi rather than the more techical aspect of the car...
The search started when I relocated to pune, a new city for me. New things were unfolding in my life and the urge to race with it on my car was unstoppable. I sold my old Zen Vxi in Gurgaon and was looking for a suitable replacement. Being an IT folk means good bucks but UNSTABALITY.. u never know when you are asked to travel. So I thought the best bet of the time would be an old car with reasonable mileage (14-18kmpl) and not very old (2-3 years). Well the first oldie I bumped upon was a forest green Ford Icon 1.3. The car was 3 years old with kms run about 70K.
Being behind the wheels after couple of months felt good and the car seemed pretty exciting to me then. Next came the Baleno Vxi 2006 model. White, Fully Loaded, Plush Interiors and scratchless exterior blew my mide.... the quote of the car was pretty reasonable as well. Well when I came to know the car would give me 9-11 (max) kmpl, the deal started to seem less exciting as it no more seemed to me a practical car anymore. Also considering the driving sense of pune (the most horrible I have ever seen) and the scarcity of parking space, ease of turning , negotiating in city traffic strengthened my view of rulling out Baleno... So what next was the obvious question :)
New Car... or Old car... is the question .... Loads of people started yelling at me.. BOSS when you can afford a new car, forget about the old one (mind you the old car comes with a higher rate of interest in case you choose to finance..close to 18%@ICICI Bank). Also a new car is a new car.. you obviously dont want a baby mishandled by the ancestors....
The start of new car search started with Esteem. I visited the Maruti showroom, and there I saw the black Esteem Vxi.. fully loaded. BTW, I am a firm believer in buying the top end variant. The looks impressed me though I would lie that a lot of other cars in the market impress me more. But what I was looking at was a more practical, affordable car good for city driving. The deal seemed good as Maruti was offering 35K discount as well as I was getting a 13K corporate discount on the car. I thought of trying the other cars as well in the meantime before I seal the deal. The next stop was TATA showroom. Believe me I didnt found even a single car which can impress a family man.. who is interested in city driving. The obvious outcome was .. forget it man.. NO TATA.... at least not for Petrol cars.... I strongly believe that TATA cars are not meant to be successful in petrol variant ... the same applies to Maruti for the deisel variant. You can see the outcome of Zen (old) deisel which came out in 2003 I believe and was a complete failure. I can bet on the same outcome for Swift Deisel.... Deisel is not Maruti’s forte.
Well, the next stop was a ford showroom. I felt the ICON flair to be a good one but the poor aftersales service and the high cost of maintainence didnt fit the practical car bill. Though somehow I felt that ICON had better looks.
Well I boiled down to Esteem Vxi coz...
It seemed to be an affordable car
Seemed very practical city car (good mileage, turning radius, maintainability, etc)
Maruti trusted after sales service
Good resale value
I got the BLACK one..... in practically no wait time.....
Today I have completed around 800 Kms with one long distance trip. It has been nearly one month I bought the car and I have no regrets...
Your valuable comments can cement my decision.. so plz comment