Dear members: A big Thank You ! After 4 months of study starting mid Feb, finally decided on the Nexon XZA+ AMT Petrol in grey color and took delivery of the same in June.Its a May'19 manufactured car. I express my sincere gratitude to all members who have commented in this thread as well as bhp’ians AYP,ani_meher,DPetrolHead,Mu009,greendream,Lathees h,nirmaljustdoit,sumeethaldankar, Simhi and others for their advice in the 'What Car' thread.
Price: The final price was 11.15 lakhs.I got some cash and corporate discount and was helped with my car being invoiced at the old rates. It was I believe sometime in the 2nd week of June that the prices were increased. I booked mine just a couple of days after the price increase but got it invoiced at the old prices thus saving quite an amount. Bought the extended 2 year warranty as well which was an extra.
Criteria: A lot of time and effort was spent in the decision which was taken based on the following criteria : Safety,Budget,Looks,Space,Dimension,Ground,clearan ce,Ride,comfort,ASS,Mileage and Family acceptance. Resale value was not a consideration as the car is planned to be kept till it dies.Cars under close consideration were Nexon,Yaris,Ecosport Trend+ (the model got discontinued when i went to book it !), Verna and Aspire.Every car ticked some or most of the criteria but not all and that added to the complexity. I should say availability of options has only increased the complexity in decision making.
Scores: In the figure below,I have listed the cars I explored and have given scores for the criteria mentioned above. It is purely personal based on my limited knowledge and please ignore the scores if it does not match yours. Safety has been accorded a weighting of 3 while everything else is a 1.Cars that I felt do not score for Safety were dropped. Else I would have bought either the Duster or Ertiga. You see Duster scores on all areas except on safety and ASS.
Showroom experience:Of the showrooms I visited, I found Ford and Hyundai’s to be best across all their branches. The guys there were the most professional, make you feel important and i actually felt bad that I did not buy from them! I will recommend them any day. Tata’s were all across the place. One showroom had a pathetic saleswoman, another had a good salesman but a manager who is one reason Tata’s have got their ill-reputation and the third Venkataramana Motors:Kushaiguda from whom I had bought the car had sales reps who were actually very good. The ambience of the showroom however needs to be improved.
Tata Showroom and buying experience:One Tata showroom said there is absolutely no discount.It was like you buy it or drop it and they had the gall to ask me when I would be purchasing the car from Their showroom !! The second showroom offered a good discount and then tried to pull a fast one on me when I went for the final negotiation. Venkataramana Motors, which was last in my list of considerations surprisingly, turned out to be very professional. Stating this not because I got a decent discount but because they treated me as a customer should be. They even followed up with me post-delivery and are still in touch. It helps that the showroom as well as service centre is just 6 kms. from my place.l
If any of you guys are also in the car-hunting process, if it helps I’l be happy to provide my experience with each of the 15+ showrooms in Hyderabad who had the privilege of hosting me
ASS : As for service,I had an Indica-Xeta petrol 10 years back and had a good ASS experience. Hoping it will be the same now.My car will be going in for the 1st service in a weeks’s time having run 850 odd kms.as of date.
Accesorises fitted: Team bhp stickers
Pros:
The car is wonderful on all criteria mentioned above and members in the forum have already extolled how good it is. Hence, I’m not delving into it any further. In fact even my family who were very skeptical during purchase have now started appreciating the choice. Not that they have a choice now.
Cons:
Upshift of gears is slow. It takes ages to shift from 1 to 2 and 2 to 3. So bad that I constantly use the manual shift.
There is certainly the head-nod movement but I guess it’s a AMT feature and I knew it while purchasing. This movement however is not as bad as it is in my Wagon R AMT.Actually,once you accept the same,you get used to it and does not become a pain !
Whoever said that there is minimal noise filtering into the cabin either is lying or I have been given a faulty car which I don’t think is the case. It does not sound to be a noiseless petrol car. Nowhere in the league of Suzuki’s.
The mileage on the trip meter varies anywhere between 9 and 10.This is in light Hyderabad traffic and I expected the figures to be much higher. There are posts which say that the reading generally is bumped up by 1 to 1.5 kmpl. Does that then mean that the mileage is between 8 and 9 !!
As for the cons,probably my expectations were high. But as of now,no complaints on the purchase.
Looking forward to having a stress-free ride for the near future.