Quote:
Originally Posted by Aroongupta I started with a choice between Safari Dicor low end and Optra 1.6 base.
I got strong suggestions to check out the Fiesta and especially the Baleno too. I have obviously included both of these in my hunt.
Sadly (personally for me), nobody voted for the dicor. That's my first love actually. The fault is mine. The criteria I layed out had performance at the top and now I see that the beast takes a strong beating there and gets out of the race at the very first point.
Now after this humbling experience, I feel no shame in saying that I am more than willing to compromise on all factors. SOMEBODY please recommend Safari Dicor. Please give me strong positives as well as strong negatives about the car. All other marginal irritants I am ready to swallow or put aside. I just wanna make sure if it is really not a worth buying. |
Aroongupta
I started out my Dicor purchase much like you - madly in love with the Safari and unsure of whether I should go for it.
For me the change of heart came with the change in the Safari's heart (the engine).
Let me put it this way - I'm having a ball with the vehicle. It RULES the highways and like I said in my earlier post it can easily maintain much higher speeds over long distances then ANY of your fast sedans in the market today simply because it just flies over obstacles that others will have to slow down for.
It is also the most comfortable vehicle on Indian roads today, Mercs included. Front seat and rear seat comfort is unparallelled, and I dont really consider the two jump seats to be seats.
Driving position and ergonomics are great. You feel everything is right as soon as you step into the vehicle.
It has presence, and like Nitin pointed out in his brief post sometime back, truck and bus drivers actualy move aside for you. Lets not talk about the smaller vehicles on the road - all you need to do is roll up to their rear windscreen and flash your lights twice.
While I feel the 3 litre engine is hiding a lot of horses (for fuel economy?), the vehicle is NO slouch as at least 3 other non-Dicor BHPians will testify - thats a souped up Palio (Pilot - McLaren), a very nice looking & sounding Baleno (Pilot - v1p3r) and a City Vtec (Pilot - a souped up Wolf). We had a brief drive on the Bangalore ring road and they were quite surprised to see a diesel willing to scuffle with the holy trinity of TBHP (the cars, not the drivers
)..
Fuel economy is pretty good for a 3 litre as I get 11kmpl overall with my atrocious driving style. A normal person should be able to get much more.
Build quality is pretty good so far - I'm paranoid about rattles and that was the part I dreaded about buying a Tata (after hearing from others). However, there has not been a SINGLE rattle so far. My family will testify to this as I am infamous for stopping in the middle of a drive just to pick out what exactly is causing even the tiniest rattle - I simply cant drive ahead if I cant figure out what is causing the noise.
Now the negatives:
1. Is a Tata and there will be niggling issues (should've gone down quite a bit now that its been in production for a while). I've had issues with 3rd party components like the A/c and the starter motor, and issues with electrics like the cabin lights that seemed to have a mind of their own and a theft alarm which once went off in the middle of the night waking up the entire neighbourhood. The good thing is that service has been excellent and Tata doesnt bother repairing these things - all the troublesome components so far have been replaced by Subros (a/c), TVS (starter motor) and Minda (theft alarm wiring) respectively. HOWEVER, this obviously means that the QC of 3rd party components is bad. I wouldnt want to visit my authorized service centre for any reason other than regular service, so these additional visits even if free are unwanted and therefore black marks.
2. Vibrations - when I took the vehicle there were some serious vibrations at around 1700-1800 rpm as the vehicle accelerated. While these have now reduced in intensity, the engine obviously has a rough spot at that RPM under hard acceleration. You dont notice this if you're just cruising, though. Beyond this, the vibrations disappear and you hear more wind noise than engine noise at speeds of 100+ (yes, even at 140).
3. Plastics - they're an improvement over the old Safari, but I dont like the fake metallic finish for the centre console nor do I like the rather flimsy plastic door-release levers. I'm getting the former rectified as Koya's in Coimbatore will give you ANY finish on your dashboard (including real leather).
4. Switches on the centre console are iffy, not what you'd expect in a 10-lakh vehicle. No trouble so far, but I dont like the feel.
5. Steering takes some getting used to - you tend to think its vague in the beginning, till you sort out the steering yourselves. Once you've adjusted to it or sorted it out, its a breeze - ask Nash (artofzen on the forum) who thought the vehicle was pretty nimble as I was throwing her around like a Maruti 800.
Now the costs - the vehicle is not cheap, even if you do get a lot for your money. Base LX 4X2 version starts off at about 8 lakhs OTR. 4X4 costs about Rs.90,000 more. I bought me an EX 4X4 which was 10.70 OTR, and I am very happy with it. You can read about my buying and some driving experiences here:
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/showth...eferrerid=1788
Read about the Bangalore drive and various impressions here:
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/showpo...5&postcount=71 http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/showpo...1&postcount=60 http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/showpo...3&postcount=46
You can also PM TBHP member "Nitinbhag" for his experiences with the Safari. He's had a couple of minor issues as well, but he seems to be very happy with the beast.
Finally - the reason I did not push the Safari's case was
(1) your requirement seemed to call for a vehicle that wont be beaten in traffic light GPs, for which the Safari is NOT the right choice.
(2) you did mention "trouble free - No Garage visits needed"
(3) your budget maxed out at 9 lakhs
It did seem then that your requirements did not call for a Safari. I do not believe in pushing a vehicle simply because I like it or own it - every recommendation from this forum should be relevant to the requirements set out by the person requesting our help.
I hope this has been of use to you!