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Thats because any car can take over broken roads but when it comes to rocks and stuff like that you find in the middle of the roads on broken roads, GC matters a lot. For e.g. indian speed breakers that you find nowadays are big enough to break your bones can be easily taken care of by any car/xuv since they are evenly spread. But when theres a, lets say a rock right in the middle, then these sedans will get banged on it. Same is the case with xuv now. With such a low GC in front, any small rock can damage it easily. So the whole point of having a suv goes for a toss. Just my two cents.

The steel would have added to both cost and weight, with which I guess the engineers decided to trade off some offroad-ability.

Can the cover be toughened by coating with some magic 'dura paint'?

^^
I have been surprised by the low GC, especially at the front.
Here's a pic from my ownership thread:

^^ I have seen myself in that kind of situations sometimes, when I'm parking on roadside, along a footpath, 99% of the time, I didn't have to worry about the plastic part touching, that 1% when I thought it may, I have stopped just in time. IMO, the plastic part hanging is close to the wheels, being close to the wheel, I guess it has less probabilities to touch anything; rest of the design is real good to avoid overhang. I have not done off-roading with this car, but surely have done lots of bad roads and I couldn't manage to touch anything except a rear mud-guard while crossing a small stream (one screw broke and had to replace that which bumped my second service bill to Rs 214.00). I guess the overall design is something I will appreciate, I'm yet to face the issues that you guys are talking about, I'll keep this in mind and lets see if I have any issues regarding GC in future.

^^
Ketan, we are discussing the claimed GC v/s the actual GC. These are plain numbers, there is no perception involved. Would be easy to measure it on one vehicle and compare with what the official specs claim.

Personally, I would have preferred if the front bumper would have been cut short by a few inches like Gaurav Gill's rally XUV as shown in below pictures:

SDP, this bumper cutting would have nothing to do with the GC. All it will do is, increase the approach angle with respect to the terrain it is treading on and help not banging on the sudden steep inclines.

What one can do to measure GC, is place a water bottle beneath the car on a level surface, mark and measure the lowest point with respect to the bottle on the bottle or above it. That should give exact measure of GC. It could also be done at various places underneath to gauge what is the GC at respective places but the minimal is one that will be binding and to be watched out for in situations that need it.

parsh, somehow I do believe that the front-bumper is the lowest point for the XUV.
Borrowing a picture from the first page for easy reference:

Check this out

Yesterday while trying to clean out some "kachra" in the middle row, I espied this electrical connection on the underside of the driver's seat going down to the floor, a length of about 5-6 inches. It does'nt interfere in any way and hardly noticeable, but rather surprised to find such an "open" electrical connection. See picture below.
It's also there under the passenger's seat so obviously it's part of the design.
Do other people also have this under their car? It's probably the connection to the seat belt sensor, that get's activated when the driver sits.

Guys, I strongly recommend that you do what I just did -- take a measuring tape or a ruler and personally measure the GC at various points with the car parked on a flat horizontal surface. Right now I took GC measurements at 3 points only and my findings are as follows :

1. Below the lowermost edge of the front mud flaps : 155 mm
2. Below the lowermost edge of the rear mud flaps : 215 mm
3. Below the lower edge of the front bumper : 390 mm

Furthermore, as I reported earlier, the GC under the plastic sump guard is around 160 mm. My sump guard has received numerous scratches and securing bolts of the sump guard got sheared off on two occasions. Also, both my rear mud flaps scraped against the ground and got almost yanked off while driving over the famous craters of Jharkhand highways.

The following inferences may be drawn from the foregoing :

1. Plastic parts don't count as far as official GC specification is concerned.
2. The front bumper is far above the lowest point of the XUV.
3. Though the GC of the rear mud flaps is far more than that of the front ones, the fact that my rear mud flaps got yanked off and nothing happened to the front ones while driving over the same craters proves that approach angle is a crucial factor, as Parsh seems to imply.
4. Parts that are very close to the wheels, such as mud flaps, can afford to have lower GC.

I checked this in my XUV and found that :

1. Identical wiring in my car under both the front seats.
2. Wiring is meant for : (A) 'Seat belt fastened' sensor, and (B) Mood lighting under the front seats.

Kindly note that no sensor gets activated when you sit on either of the front seats. The two seatbelt sensors (front seats only) are inside the two Buckles (female connectors) inside which you insert the male connectors (called Tongues) while fastening the seat belts.

TVS Trivandrum will be the last guys to offer any freebies. Their attitude towards buyers is like they are doing us a favor by selling us an XUV. Even for the insurance bargaining, I had asked them if they would match any external quotes and their answer was a flat no! On top of it, they made a statement that they can't guarantee the same level of service if the insurance is not taken through them, in the scenario where I might need to use the insurance.

So yeah, please go in without too much expectations. You might walk out a happy customer. All I wanted was my XUV at the earliest. So didn't pay too much attention to the sales folks. Though I got to say, the service folks are pretty decent chaps.

I have been silently reading through the last couple of posts regarding the ground clearance. All this talk of low clearance and bottom scraping led me to do a quick check on my own XUV. Surprisingly, there's not a single scratch even on the front mud flap. The huge piece of plastic as well under the engine has nothing but dirt on it. No scratches and the 2 bolts holding them in place are in perfect condition as well.

Now to put some clarity into things, I have driven my XUV for 9951 kms over the last 3 months. I have been through the horrible roads between Nipani & Ajra on my way to Goa in December. My XUV has been to Munnar via a not so frequently used route. And from Poopara onwards, there were sections which could have considered off roading tracks. Throughout all these driving, it has not scraped the bottom once. Even on the horribly designed speed breakers of Bangalore, its gone through just fine. Just trying to understand at what kind of places has this ground clearance become an issue. Because frankly, it hasn't been one at all for me so far.

Debuda, how do you explain the fact that when you are driving the car alone without a co-passenger in front, there is no alert "for seat belt not fastened", even though that belt is unfastened and all systems in the car are energised? This seems to suggest that only when a weight is placed on the seat ( in other words a person sits on the seat and a weight is detected), that the seat belt unfastened alert is triggered. This alert is removed when the belt is fastened by placing the tongue inside the buckle, and that certainly has a sensor as you say? It seems to me to be a two step process.

@ Vasuki, let me do that!
As per my understanding, there is no explicit way to turn off the navigation. BUT, if you switch to other screens (e.g. Music), after some time, navigation automatically turns off.

Heavy_Horse, there is no weight sensor. There are 2 "seat-belt not fastened" visual indicator. The one for driver is right in front as part of the dials and it does stop glowing even if you "click" the belt without seating on the driver's seat.


The other indicator is for the passenger and is part of the switch-bank in the center waterfall console. Again this one also stops glowing even if no passenger is seated in that seat, but you still "click" the belt.


Hope this clarifies.

SDP this certainly clarifies. I was under the impression that the seat belt alert for BOTH front seats are indicated in the "Diwali" display area, which has been my experience with all my previous cars. However, the co-passenger display is in the waterfall console, as you point out. Many thanks.

There is definitely a way to switch off navigation.

You need to select "Route" menu in the Navigation screen (bottom left I think) and select "Delete this Route".