This is not intended to be a technical review for if that’s your expectation, you can check out the tech specs of the car online. I am just going to provide you a lay man’s view on the car, plain and simple English.:)
Driving the Car:
The car is pure pleasure to drive and by that I mean just drive the car, not race it in city traffic or elsewhere. If I were sitting in the passenger seat I could easily fall off to sleep, that kind of a pleasurable drive. Not only does it look sturdy and solid, it drives like that as well. The top-end model ZX comes with tubeless tyres and alloy wheels so you get the best feel on any Indian roads. In most cases, the sorry excuse for roads.
Now, the issues with driving the car starts with the clutch pedal and the gear stick. The problem with the clutch pedal is that it’s connected from the left side and hence, its optimal use is when you are using it with the top part of your foot only. If you have large feet then you will have to change the way you use the clutch. The lever that the pedal is attached to is higher than the clutch so you end up pressing the lever instead of the pedal. Changing gears feels like you are driving a Maruti 800. It’s a bit crude and most of the time it feels as if you are bullying the gear-stick to do your bidding.
Once you have accustomed to the quirks of the clutch and the gear-stick, it’s all too easy. It handles pretty well, turns well on curves and u-turns. But, if you want to overtake that idiot who cut right in front of you and is straddling two lanes(which is what happens most of the time in B’lore) then forget about it. The car doesn’t have the ability to ’zip-zap-zoom’ and can be quite sluggish if you try to get that extra push every now and then.
Seating and Interiors:
I would hazard calling the car a hybrid of a tall car and a sedan. I don’t have to squeeze myself into the drivers seat as is the case in most of the sedans. For a relatively tall person(read 6ft) that’s a great feature. To get off the car all you need is to swivel to the right, place your feet on the ground and get up, much like a Santro or any other "tall boy" design car. The driver’s seat is great with lumbar support, ability to pump-up the seat to match your body’s contours and the like. It feels very spacious and it is, until you look back and there’s precious little you can see through the rear windshield. The dashboard is clean and funky what with the use of chrome on the dials. However, it is a bit rotund, but then again, so is its backside. The controls are crisp and clear and the additional audio control on the steering completes the funky look and completeness in design.
The problem with being "designed tall" is that everything is up, including the backside. This is why I think the rear view mirror is rendered useless, unless you intend to monitor your backseat. This is also where the manufacturer got the smarts to cut costs, in the form of a missing rear windshield wiper. However, the rear is equipped with a de-fogger! Go figure.
Nevertheless, I was willing to let all this pass as it is just a matter of getting used to a new car and adapting oneself. I was very much gung-ho at this point so I decided to checkout how it feels to sit in the rear seat. I came to know later on, that this is not the done thing, test drive means you drive the car and that’s it! This is also where it started to fall apart. Apart from the obvious fact that the rear seat is designed only for two people, the roof of the car was awfully low. The hand rest when pulled up was jutting out significantly enough to make it a very unpleasant experience for a third entity. Also, sitting upright(which is how the rear seats are designed), my head was touching the roof of the car. Hence the title of this review article.
I am a little over 6ft(I’d like to say 6.1), and I couldn’t sit in the rear seat. Whilst there are a lot of adjustments I was willing to do, slouching or lying down in the rear seats wasn’t one of them. This also led me to believe that as the SX4 is pitched as a man’s car, most men are short! Maruti’s products are bang on as far as the demographics of India is concerned. It just wasn’t designed for someone like me and evidently, there are very few of me.
That marked the end of the "test drive" and any prospective association with the SX4. It looked great from the outside, sleek albeit with a propped up butt. You can adapt and make a few changes to how you drive, but if you can’t sit in the car, then it’s just no good.