I bought this vehicle recently. Santro, Indica Xeta were regular contenders. Especially Xeta was a strong due to its throw away prices. But since Tata’s these days are into Indicab business, I don’t think individual’s like us are their customers. I got the same feeling at the showroom also. Overall Tata vehicles have a high maintenance and ride quality diminishes with time. Also resale value for Tata vehicles is not good.
Experience with Varun Motors, Hyderabad was pleasant. HDFC Car loan threw lot of tantrums for sanctioning the loan. Very unprofessional staff, but then I gotta bear with them as they quoted lowest interest rate in the market(9.75%).
My main concern was low fuel cost. I didn’t want to think about switching on a/c or taking a short two wheeler trip to save on fuel. WagonR is indeed serving the purpose. Mileage with LPG is coming around 13 kmpl in city conditions with a/c on most of the time which is pretty good.
I’m totally satisfied with looks. The vehicle looks good. Overall it’s a decent compact car for Indian roads. Power steering is good. Gear shift is little cluttering, it should smoothen over the period of time.
But one thing I want to bring to people’s attention is that the car is expensive. There are absolutely no freebies. A similar high end version of Santro will cost you(considering costs of accessories and freebies you are getting on the whole package) by almost 40, 000 less which is not a good deal if you are going to drive the car only on weekends.
Buy this vehicle if you intend to drive somewhere around 1000 km a month, that you will recover your extra paid up for LPG.
2nd Update
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Some more additional info about LPG folks -
You can visit https://iac.org.in to check out various LPG outlets across India. It’s a very useful piece of information which everyone out there will be looking forward to.
3rd Update
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I’m loving this car like never before. I’ve closed around 2500 km and done 1st servicing. Now the mileage is coming around 15 kmpl for LPG in city with AC on all the time. Now this is surreal. Running cost is little less than 2 Rs/km. Although it depends a lot on your driving habbits. Few things if you make a part of your driving habbit you can really extract more juice from this dream machine -
1) Avoid sudden braking and pick up.
2) Anticipate stops and brake accordingly.
3) Try to drive in a constant smooth speed of 40-60 km/hr.
4) Use gears judiciously. 2nd for below 20, 3rd till 30, 4th till 40 and top(5th) from 40 km/hr onwards.
5) Drive car on petrol for at least 8 to 10 kms after every say 250-300 km run on LPG.