When I began looking around for my first car, I began from the small car segment(very limited budget, you see). Somehow none of the small cars gave me any satisfaction inspite of their fancy features. We went through the dilema that all first time buyers go through. When the features were there, the price was too high, when the price was right, the feature were not attractive. The big cars were way beyond our budget. We wanted car which had quite a bit of utility and was a long term buy.
We went to see the Marina which we were told was quite economical. Since we found the small cars very expensive for the value add that they were providing, we were very sceptical about the Marina meeting our budget.
We went to Fortune Motors on the Saki vihar road and laid our eyes on the Marina for the first time. The model on display had actually collapsed the rear seat which displayed the entire space of the Car. It was love at first sight. I must say that the dealer representatives gave us the space need to explore the car. They did not hang around us giving information that we were not looking for(something most small car dealer representatives did). Once we were happy with what we saw, we very hesitantly asked for the price and was very very pleasantly surprised when I was told that it would cost about 5.85 lacs for the LX version which was the highest variant of the the Diesel Engine. Even then the price was a bit over our budget, something we shared with the representative.
We gave what we were ready to pay upfront along with our monthly budget with very little hope that we were going to buy this car. Surprise, surprise, they actually worked out a package different from their regular finance deal to meet our requirement.
We were proud owners of a Black Indigo Marina in a few weeks time. It met with all the requirements of space for a family with 2 growing kids.
We have gone on 3 -4 long trips to Mahabaleshwar, Panchgani, Pratapgarh, Raigarh, Bheemashankar, Nasik, Pune & long drives in and around Mumbai.There has never been any issue either on the mileage, pickup or performance. The car has seen 2 Mumbai Monsoons and has proved itself to be very water tight. The AC is to kill for, extremely fast cooling for a car which has so much volume to cool. No loss of power when the AC is on unless you want to perform some kind of stunt with wheel tracks on the road. I have travelled at 130 kms for more than half hour on the expresssway without any issue. The road grip is good and the car is extremely stable at high speeds.
This car is definitely not for the fast and furious. If flashy is your style, don’t bother, if performance with decent looks is what you are looking for, then this is your car.
The entire experience has been very very satisfying and we couldn’t ask for more. Marina is truly Indian in nature. Poora Paisa Vasool.