I am currently a happy owner of Santro Xing. I am planning to have an upgrade to a sedan and for that have shortlisted 4 probable candidates
The Suzuki SX4, Honda City ZXi, Hyundai verna and Ford Fiesta.
On saturday I had taken a test drive of SX4 and here are my reviews -
Prashant from Chowgule Autos - pune got me a black SX4 VXi for test drive. It was a brand new black SX4 that was standing in front of me, making a power statement.
3 of us along with Prashant go into the car and I was planning to test out its power on the Mumbai B’lore highway. I turned the key and the engine smoothly
reved up to life; and one could feel the power that it was capable of un leashing. I switched on the A/C and shifted the gear which smoothly fell into 1st.
With a light touch on the accelerator the car started rolling. Once outside the society gates, I went a bit hard on accelerator. I wanted to check out what the
1600 CC can belt out. To my dismay, it was comparable to what a new Santro could do; there was hardly a feel of power surge and in no way did it give a feeling that there was a
monster under that mean looking hood. I hit the highway and was switching to 5th gear and it was not ready to budge. Most of the people who have driven a Wagon -R would be able to relate to what I am saying. I have a Santro that is 5 years old now and its
gear shift would have beaten SX4’s - hands down. I should have been doing 100 and the amount of road noise that was audible in the cabin made me give a glance to Prashant and he understood what I meant.
Thanks to the contruction work in Pune, I was able to test out the shockers as well and my dad who was sitting on the rear said, our Santro did a smoother job.
The power stearing was nothing great, but ok kind of. The stearing did give you a feel of being in control of the car. Over all the cabin from within gave feeling of being congested
as compared to the initial feel that one gets after seeing the car from the outside.
The trunk space was amazing. 2 Airport bags should easily fit in. Not sure why they did not give some of this space to the passenger cabin. The rear view is very limited and obstructed - bad design. I was very concious about this since in Santro I get a very good rear end view.
I was told that for the car gives 13KMPl in city and around 15-16 kmpl on highways - I have not checked this out myself, though reviews claim a mileage of 10 and 15 in city and highway respectively.
The pros definitely being - good service network and cheaper spare parts - that any car from maruti stable can claim of.
At 7.9 lakhs(on road price) for this car, it did not seem to be worth it. I have decided not to go in for this car and I am resting my hopes on Hyundai Verna/Honda City to meet my requirements. Would surely post my first feel of these cars once I test drive them.