This weekend I thought to do one more test drive to finalize my decision on the Tiago XZA (AMT) and what happened has left me a bit confused.
I called up Prerana Motors, Lal Bagh Road Bangalore and requested for a Test Drive on Saturday. The lady on the other end said the test drive car has gone to Rajajinagar and hence was not immediately available. I asked if the car would be available at their BTM Layout Showroom and she said Prerana Motors across all outlets has only 1 test drive car and that was at Rajajinagar. I asked them to call back when the car was available and left my number.
I then called Aadya Motors, Kanakapura Road and enquired for a Test Drive. This time they said the TD car has gone to Hebbal and hence was not available.
It looks like per dealership they have only 1 TD car and it goes from one corner of town to another....
I later received a call from Prerana Motors stating they would arrange test drive for me on Sunday and fixed this up. On Sunday, after much delay, the guy reached at around 3-30 PM with a Test Drive Car.
This time, I switched off the music system and AC/Blower and drove the car listening to the engine. Somehow I feel my personal level of engine noise tolerance is high and I found the noise levels tolerable. As a side bar note, let me add that my other car is a Diesel Honda City - which is not really known for much refinement either...
Next, I tried the car over my favorite incline which I take all cars over. The creep alone did not hold the car and the car rolled back a little. I did brake and then did a full throttle and the car managed to move forward and managed to get back into control. Not bad, the Celerio also behaved in pretty much the same way on this incline. (For the record, the only car which managed to move forward on this incline with just the creep mode and no accelerator input has been the Grand i10 Automatic.)
I drove sedately and found that the switching of gears is acceptable. I then switched to manual mode and drove for while. The experience in the manual mode was more confidence inspiring and its a reassurance that in some scenarios it would be handy to have this option available. I completed the Test Drive and came back and tried the Harman Music System - the sound quality is really good.
At this point of time, I asked my Dad if he would like to do a Test Drive and we went on another TD and this time I sat in the back seat. I felt the back seats are smaller in size and lacks thigh support and may not be very comfortable for highway long distance journeys (this maybe common in this segment though and here again let me point that my other car is the 4th Gen Honda City which is famous for its spacious and comfortable rear seat - so again it maybe that my expectation is set high). On the positive side, the car provides speed sensing auto-locking where the doors get locked once the car reaches a speed of about 10-15 kmph.
Now here is where the fun starts. The Automatic mode test drive went fine and this is when my Dad decided to switch to Manual Mode. Once he moved to Manual Mode, the car stopped taking the accelerator input correctly and started moving in a odd manner. Also, even though he hit the "+" sign to upshift the gear that also did not work. I decided to take over the reigns and moved to the driver seat. Realized that my Dad was not doing anything wrong and something had really gone wrong with the car. The Manual mode was just not working. The car refused to move even in the first gear now. Moved back to Autmatic mode and it managed to move forward at a low speed but struggled to cross 10-15 kmph.
Finally handed over the car to the Sales Rep. and he too was unsure what to do. Switched off the car, pulled out the key and tried again but it did not work. He put the car in reverse gear and the car moved backwards smoothly. I joked that he may have to take the car backwards to the showroom all the way
He put it back to Auto mode and the car was only able to move forward at slow speeds and did not upshift to second gear also. We headed back and he dropped me back at home and promised to bring another car for Test Drive again. The car had a mileage only 1062 kms on board when I checked. The Sales Rep mentioned that even the First Service had not been completed on the car. Now there ends my story of Test Drive for today.
At the end of it here are my thoughts:
Should I dismiss this as one-off incident or
is the AMT technology really mature overall or has Magneti Marelli released a product with some form of design defect? We are seeing some woes on the Maruti AMT woes thread as well.
I need to double check
what kind of warranty TATA provides on the AMT Gearbox. The Sales Rep was not very sure on what all is covered under warranty.