Team-BHP - When you had a bigger budget, yet happily settled for a lower-priced car

I voted yes.

When I was younger my desire for owning a better vehicle was more intense that my limited financial means. As I have gotten older I now know what I want from a car and more often than not it means that I don't have to buy the most expensive one in that category.

So for an upcoming purchase, I have decided on an Innova Hycross over a "fancy" brand, because the Innova meets my needs - a chauffer driven large luxury car.

In January, I was in the market with a budget of 40-45 lakhs to purchase a reliable car with low service cost and great resale value.

- I test-drove the Fortuner, XUV 700, and Creta. I even created a post on a forum to help me decide which car to buy. After considering all the factors, I decided to settle for the Creta. However, my plans to book XUV 700 were cancelled after reading the forum section on its niggles.

- The final contenders were Fortuner and Creta. But since I already had a Mercedes for the snob value and highway duties, I rejected the Fortuner and brought the Creta home. The money I saved was invested in land.

For me too, it was the other way. Was looking for EV for city runabouts considering how GRAP kicks in without notice and then one must move to cabs.

I was looking at Nexon EV. Test drive car was not up to the mark, the suspensions were in bad shape; decided to check out MG ZS EV and was sold on drive quality, fit finish and larger battery. ADAS further got added into the requirements which was not on radar resulting in increased spend from 20 L to 26 L for the top end EV.

Turns out that more often than not, what we really want from a car is available in a much affordable form. As an example, I really wanted to have a manual gearbox hatch. The powerful ones didnt come with a manual and what came with one, wasnt really desireable. So, we bought an Ignis and made it drive a little better with few mods and suddenly I see myself driving that everywhere. It is such a pleasure to drive on a good road that I dont miss bigger engines or higher speeds at all. The "hatch that darts" is joy.

We done it twice!

We got the manza in 2010 and have been in the same segment - Got the ciaz in 2016 and city in 2022

We had the budget for a duster/XUV5 while we looked at Ciaz, and a Octavia budget in 2022.

The priority was back seat comfort. 2016-Found duster interiors horrid, XUV5 cumbersome to drive in Mumbai city then. Octy was a dream, but didnt make sense because of a discontinuing model + unreliability. Backseat of city was way better than that of octy

Done this twice, both times for the sake of efficiency

2010: was looking for a hatchback as my first car, chose i10 over i20 despite having the budget (i20 had the same engine but was heavier)

2021: I had a budget of upto 25L but wanted a car fast. I test drove multiple cars and then booked an MG Hector as it had the earliest availability. The low mileage was a factor playing on my mind and hence cancelled the booking to go for a Creta that became magically available. Even in Creta, the DCT & Diesel AT were in my budget but i went for the top-end IVT (same features, sedate but efficient engine)

Over time, there are not too many reasons left to buy an entry level luxury car other than the brand name and probably safety. All features are available in regular SUVs, the driving experience is ~70-80% of big three and in Indian traffic, you are not going to extract much of the superior performance.

While I happily settled for a lower priced car , I won't say its the wisest decision I have taken. I have however thoroughly enjoyed taking this decision. LEt me explain.

I had to sell my 7 year old Baleno and pick up a new car within a budget of 16/17 lakhs max and wasn't impressed with anything out there.

Then i was just browsing Teambhp classifieds and chanced upon something that had always enticed me when it was in production, Fiat Linea Tjet 125S.

I know the parts are hard to source and there is little to no A.S.S support, i got cursed by everyone in the family to be this stupid and I totally understand why. But boy am I having fun? hell yeah! This thing is so good in the stock form and I have upgrades planned.

Voted Yes.
That's been the trend with my last few car purchases.
Moved from a Fortuner ( in the end, family simply refused to sit in it for road trips) to a humble BRV ( much better ride and handling balance) and more recently Verna SX DCT when I could have bought the SXO with ADAS, the slightly more expensive VAG twins or Hyundai-Kia crossover twins. ( Rationale - didn't want ADAS, no faith in VAG reliability and ASS competence and why pay 3-4 lacs more for the same power train in Creta/Seltos.) Polarizing looks aside, I have always maintained the Verna Turbo petrol gives me 75% of a 3 series at 25% of the price. ( am an ex-owner of a 3 series)
On a lighter note, my best friend jokes, ( comparing me to the "Curious case of Benjamin Button" ), that the rate at which I am downgrading (according to him) , I will soon be riding a bicycle!

Voted yes. I love being minimalist and choose exactly what I want. I hate too many screens, connected features that need subscription, features that tend to fail and cost me a bomb later. Because of these reasons, I've purchased XUV700 MX, though I was having budget for AX7L. XUV700 even in MX avatar is a great car and solves the purpose very well.

I've written a detailed review here: https://www.team-bhp.com/news/brough...7-pros-14-cons

Honestly, there is no other car that can match VFM aspect of XUV700 MX variant.

For me it was not a lower priced car but a lower variant. Jeep Compass.
The initial plan was to go for Diesel Limited Automatic Variant which was the one made available for the first test drive. However, that gearbox was not to my liking. The box's logic was absolutely not in line with my logic and it really struggled in the twists and curves of my neighbourhood. Later, I drove the manual and loved it. In the end went for the base variant (Sport Diesel) which had all the features I wanted except for the rear air bags. Difference of approximately 12 lakhs was hard to ignore. I also had the Thar CRDE for all the 4x4 requirements which further cemented my position

Voted yes.
My long and wonderful drive for 10 years, a 2013 Skoda Octavia 1.8TSi had run about 80K km. Though it continued to run brilliantly, the low stance and anxiety about future maintenance , led me to scout for a change.

Priorities were easy ingress/egress, full set of safety features, ADAS and reliable aftercare. A SUV configuration and AWD were matter of 'heart over head' choices. The natural progression from the Octy 1.8TSi would have been a luxury German SUV - Q3, X1, GLA. XC40. Looked at all, however, for the asking price, there were many compromises - especially in the rear seat department (a driver does the day to day driving, I only on longer weekend/road trips).

So decided to take a look at the Volkswagen Tiguan and Hyundai Tucson. Ignored the Kodiaq as there was a new model coming in and the older one had no ADAS, besides I did not want a 7 seater. Tiguan ticked most boxes, but lacked ADAS and the Indian version was at the end of its lifecycle.

So finally went in for a Hyundai Tucson, AWD version. It struck a balance for me between all that I wanted in the car. Cost wise too, significantly less than the aforementioned luxury SUVs.

Been there, done that!

I did buy my Slavia 1.5 because I loved the car, although it was cheaper by 8-15 lakhs than the two cars that I initially wanted to buy which were the XUV700 and the Compass. Compass is extremely overpriced for what it offers while the XUV700 has an extremely poorly planned list of variants missing on very basic features for a car with a starting price of 17.5 lakhs on road.

Infact even with the Slavia I settled for Ambition variant as it covered all the necessary features I was looking forward to while saving a cool 2.5 lakhs.