Introduction: Long time fan of Tata Safari, but was avoiding buying it due to several known problems like vibrations, driving pleasure etc. etc. Waited long time and then decided on buying Scorpio finally because being a professional I do not want to sit at the service station during weekends for fixing minor to major issues with Safari 3.0 dicor. Did my part of research( I must mention mouthshut helped a lot). The day I decided to buy Scorpio, the news came out that Safari 2.2 Dicor is released. Wow! Luck, destiny anything but now that it is released I must take a test drive before making my final decision.
Dealer number 1: I want to mention this since this could be a problem. I and 2 friend fixed a test drive and went to this dealer, wa la the 2.2 dicor was standing there but the test drive vehicle was no where to be seen. Sales told me I have to wait few minutes, this is when I called and confirmed that we are coming. Anyway we thought we will pass my time by looking at the 2.2 EX standing in the showroom.
Looks outside: Same almost with few changes like front grill and spare tire cover. All an all ok, anyway if we go by looks Safari did not need any change it was already ahead of others in this area.
Looks Inside: Beige interior gives you a feeling of openness and extra space. The old grey interiors were not very impressive. Finishing is also improved well slightly. I would say interiors are improved by 30%.
We waited for over an hour and decided that the dealer is lying about the test drive vehicle and decided to leave.
While going back we went past another TATA dealer and thought let’s give it a try here. Here we were lucky the dealer quickly gave us a VX model for a test drive. While they were filling up papers we started the vehicle. We stared at each other, there was no noice at all, no vibrations, my friend was surprised to a level he asked me to press the accelerator to make sure the engine is running. I press the accelerator, the engine gave a hummm, and wow the hummm in itself is lovable. By now we all were very excited and ready to burn some rubber.
I took the steering 2 guys from the dealership and 2 of my friends so in total of 5 people were in the ride. We wanted to go on a long stretch of road to test all the gears.
I do not understand the technical language so I would put the review in layman’s way.
Gear 1: good pickup and handling
Gear 2-4: initial pickup is low so when you accelerate it takes a moment for the engine to respond, you can feel this very moment although it is fraction of a second, but once this moment is passed an adrenalin crunching power is exploded and you are the leader on the road with everyone giving you way like a king. Even the autowalas and bus walas.
Gear 5: Silence is the only word. The whole cabin went silence when I put this beast into 5th gear; this was at the speed of 110. No noice and a pin drop silence, The engine was still responding on a slight press of a paddle. We all were looking at each other, with no words to utter.
Brakes: This was a VX(Top model) with ABS, Although we did not went upto that level to test the ABS working we did a lot of zig zag driving and brakes gave the feeling that the SUV is in your control. The only difference between normal and ABS as told by the dealer is stability when braking at high speed.
Suspension: Perfect, well if you compare with competitors like Scorpio, Endeavour etc. etc. The dealer asked me to not slow down on speed breakers and try putting the vehicle into path holes. I tried 4 speed breakers with speed ranging from 20 KMS to 80 well you just feel a tickle nothing more than that on the speed breakers. On path holes(Big ones) a slight feeling of bump but on small humps and bad roads no problem at all, the passengers will not even know that we are on bad roads. We did not try it much on off road but we are already satisfied with the drive quality.
Comparison with 3 L Dicor. I would rate 3 L 5/10 and 2.2 8/10. I would also like to add if you try both it will change the way you look at 3 L Dicor. 2.2 Dicor is much more composed and easy to drive. No tweaking noices, No vibrations and best of all the engine hmmm is great, ready to rock on the highways as well as in city trafic.
I have decided to buy Safari 2.2 and going to book it in 2 days, with approximate delivery within one week.