[ I have deleted my review & instead converted it into my exp. with the car at different intervals]
12th Feb’06:
Today I managed to touch 155 km/hr on the Nagpur-Hyderabad highway, about 30 kms from Nagpur. The road was empty & so I took the chance. Even at that speed, the car seemed to be accelerating & I had not floored the pedal completely.
Update on 21/04/06:
I got the car’s first oil change done yesterday since she had completed 7550 kms. Plus the service centre guy coaxed me into getting the anti-rust coating done too. After the oil change, the engine has become a little silent. The gears are meshing smoothly.
After the car got back to Mumbai in March, I realised that the cars clutch was extremely stiff. In the bumper to bumper Mumbai traffic, where one needs to press the clutch number of times, it is very demanding on the left leg. Fortunately, we don’t stay in Mumbai & so we just need to make a days visit to the crowded city once in a while. After every Mumbai trip, my left leg pains for a few hours. During the cars visit to the service centre for oil change, I asked if anything could be done to the stiff clutch. Thankfully, when I got the car back in the evening, the clutch was much lighter. Atleast 50% effort has reduced. So my left leg is much happier now because I benefit from the lighter clutch even on the highways.
The visit to the service centre cost me Rs.4234/- thanks to the Rs.3000/- worth anti-rust treatment.
And I forgot to mention one thing. One rubber tube connected to the fuel pump got cut twice & had to be replaced. As a temporary remedy, I had chopped off that part of the tube that was cut & refitted. This had reduced the tube’s length & so had to be replaced.
27/07/06:
The car’s second service (@10500 kms) was done day-before-yesterday at K.S.Shah service centre at Andheri (W) near Fun Republic. Our earlier Indica’s most of the services were done here since we were happy with the work done by them. But this time it was different. The attitude of the people there is bordering between softness & rudeness. Maybe its because there are too many Tata cars being sold and there is not a proportionate rise in the number of service centres. But still, I feel that Tata Motors should do something so that the customer does not come out of the service centre with some bad feeling about either the car or the company.
No mechanical problems with the car. The car is still managing to entertain me while driving and I have to agree that I don’t get to try its limit very often since it is very high. The car seems to have a lot of reserve power which doesn’t get used all the time. On the mileage front I have stopped keeping an accurate track of the figures, but I think the car is delivering something around 15-16 kmpl with AC and over 18 kmpl without AC.
One thing I had forgot to mention was that, if anyone is a music buff, the cassette+radio player provided by the company needs to be replaced. Also, since the car has an internal antenna, the FM signal reception is weak at places a little away from the city limits.
29/10/06:
My Indica Turbo hasn’t done too much mileage in the last couple of months. The current odometer reading says 12700 kms. Around 11500 kms the car was displaying a tendency to pull slightly towards the left. In any case its first wheel balancing & alignment was overdue. But, since there is no professional tyre shop in Alibag, I had to wait for a outstation visit to do it. The left front wheel rim had lost its circular shape because of a big thud in the past.
And because of improper alignment, even the suspension wasn’t working to its 100% capacity. During Diwali we had planned a 4-days trip to Lonavala. I had decided to make a visit to Pune on any one of those days & get the Wheel Alignment & balancing done. But fortunately there was a big MRF Tyre franchisee in Lonavala itself. So I got it done there. The damaged rim was shifted to the stepny. And after doing the complete job, the car definetly feels better to drive with the suspension also back to normal.
One annoying thing that Tata Motors haven’t corrected is the functioning of the Wiper blades. They are not smooth operators & make a khuddrrr-khuddrr noise atleast during the first few swipes or when its not raining very heavily. This problem does not get corrected even after replacing the Wipers.
21st Dec.’2007:
The car has completed over 28500 kms. After the latest service& oil change, the engine is performing as good as new. Absolutely no complaints from this dept. But the same cannot be said about other things like fit & finish of body parts, suspension & few other stuff. I agree that my driving is a little rough, but the car’s build quality is not upto what we can expect in this competitive world. Something or the other makes slight squealing noise in the car & it is enough to disallow you from enjoying the turbo-noise (rather music) from the upto-the-mark engine. THe suspension also seems to be demanding some kind of attention.
I am looking forward to the launch of the new Indica next month. I sincerely hope that Tata Motors has worked on making the car’s dynamics & build quality as good as competition.