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Originally Posted by CEF_Beasts https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3Kop...Z2bWFpdjZ6bQ==
The latest issue on the HyCross, the media car’s fuel gauge stopped working and showed the tank as full even though it had reached the E mark and they ran out of fuel. PPS: The day writing mails to Toyota India started getting re-directed by them to dealerships was the day when this mess started. |
Thank you for this post, CEF_Beasts. As a fellow long time Toyota user and new Hycross owner, I can certainly appreciate all that you have written.
Back when the original Innova, Fortuner and Hilux were developed, the market and the philosophy which worked were very different. They were meant to be super durable Toyota vehicles for emerging markets. Corners must have been cut, but they were still REAL Toyotas which had no pretensions of being fancy crossovers. They had to be solid, hard wearing and durable. That is exactly what the customer wanted. Even the Crysta and Fortuner 2nd gen were essentially re-skinned iterations of the first gen cars, maintaining the same solid underpinnings.
Today, the market has moved on. Very few customers care about the mechanical purity or the fit and finish. To appeal to the masses, you need to give all the possible gizmos, a fuel efficient motor, comply with all the emissions and fuel norms and do all this at a competitive price. As a result, almost no car is built like the good old days. Is the screen laden W214 nearly as durable as a W124 from 3 decades ago? No way. Examples of old W124s are still running as taxis in some African countries. Can you imagine a new W214 even living that long?
The epidemic has also hit the Innova. The Hycross may carry the Innova brand name, but it has changed the Innova formula in its entirety. FWD, petrol, hybrid, automatic, monocoque, feature loaded and…Value for Money! These changes have addressed all the ‘shortcomings’ of the old Innova, but have given rise to new ones.
The bottom line is, the Internet is a place where you will find enough negative content about every single car to make you not want to buy it. The occurrences with the Hycross are unfortunate, but are quite rare. Also, none of them seem to be breakdown inducing faults. Back when the Internet hadn’t invaded our lives as much, nobody thought about such decisions with such great depth. Imagine, if every YouTuber had drummed it into the heads of the public that the Qualis is a cheap, noisy, outdated breadbox that Toyota thinks it can dump onto third world markets, nobody would have thought that it was a desirable car. Anybody who faces any issue with a product or service goes straight to his/her keyboard to type it out and let the whole world know. Machines and moving parts will always have things going wrong. Producing cars on such a large scale will certainly lead to issues with a few units. What matters is how effectively does the manufacturer reduce the number of defects per 1000 cars and how effective are the dealers in resolving the concerns. The BHPian who had the brake pad issue has posted how Toyota has been researching about his issue and has tried to do R and D on it. That is so much better than manufacturers who have random, serious and frequent issues with their flagship products and have no clue about resolving them.
I myself just took delivery of a new Hycross ZX (o) in Sparkling black colour. It is a very tech loaded car and feels very modern. Your insights helped me to a great extent to arrive at this decision. I went to take delivery in my dad’s 2021 Crysta GX 2.4. I could certainly feel that the Crysta has better quality plastics, feels better screwed together and somehow, also feels more effortless to drive. The Crysta also trumps the Hycross on certain design aspects. For instance, the rear AC vents are positioned better. The ingress-egress is easier. The dashboard design appears more cohesive. But then, one can’t deny that the Hycross is a major improvement in terms of tech, efficiency, refinement and comfort. If the Hycross satisfies your use case, you should certainly stick to your booking. If possible, try and get it quicker by using some contacts at the dealership/TKM.
As has been said on the forum, no such thing as a perfect car.
PS. Thanks for your detailed comparison of Hycross Vis a vis Kodiaq and Fortuner. Really helped me pick the right car: