Guys, got my Indica Vista Quadrajet Aura ABS on Saturday (27/03/10) . A brief of how things unfolded.
I had booked a Grey one with Prerana motors 3 weeks ago, but my first choice was always Porcelain White and they had almost convinced me that it will take them 3-4 weeks to get one and with the April price hike, (VAT, road tax) in Karnataka, i decided to settle down with grey. Fortunately, my first test drive was from Concorde motors and the sales guy (Ajit) got in touch with me again and i explained him the situation. He politely asked me to cancel the booking with Prerana motors and promised me that he will get me a porcelain white car in a weeks time. And i happy to oblige , Prerana guys had not deposited my booking amount cheque yet and they promptly gave it back to me , not questions asked.
The very same day i called the Concorde salesman to my place and booked my White tiger . They offered me a finance option with Axis bank initially but for some godforsaken reason, axis bank had reduced their total funding amount for Vista (they could only fund 70 % of the on road price) and i decided not to go with them. Next option that was given to me was HDFC bank and they turned out to be pretty nice folks. They offered me a loan for 9.75 % fixed interest rate for 5 yrs with 90 % on road funding (though i finally ended up making a down payment of 1.5 L). There was some issue with my bank statement and proceedings were delayed by 2 days. And then came the D day.
It was a bright Saturday morning, my friend (who apparently owns a Palio purchased from the same showroom) decided to come along, thanks to team bhp PDI thread which advised me to take a good observer along. It was almost half past 12 when we reached the showroom. After the formalities and a couple of signatures later, i got the first glimpse of my white tiger . She looked beautiful and not to forget "BIG". However, will set aside my happy memories recollections for a while and do some reality check.
PDI:
Thanks to team bhp thread again, it saved me a lot of pain and sorrow. My good friend (Prashu) and me were thoroughly inspecting the car and when the Sales guy was showing us the spare tyre, my friend just stopped him and noticed that the spare tyre was used
. We asked the sales guy and he tried to give us some explanation, he somehow got the courage to tell me that my white beauty had a flat tyre on her way from the yard to the showroom. I asked him to stop right there and told him that i am not taking her home with that tyre in the boot. We also checked the date on the tyre (i urge prospective car buyers to do the same) and the spare tyre was of Sep 09 make and the other 4 tyres where Feb 10, this made our case stronger and finally the guy replaced the tyre from another vista (probably at the cost of some ignorant customers satisfaction). Couple of other parts were loose (high mounted stop lamp, driver side door panel) and we got it fixed.
Finally i got to drive my White beauty, she is quite a powerhouse with a good noise and vibration insulation. I felt like driving a big car and noticed the indicab guys making way for the bigger sibling (i was tired of being pushed around in my zen). Still getting to know her and not much of highway driving, so not much i can write about my driving experience.
Couple of problems i did notice are
1) Front right tyre screeched and skidded when i tried to test the ABS, i was at around 80-90 KMPH when i braked, i did make sure there was no one behind me for a good 1 km. Her alignment is slightly off, i thought this may be the reason for my bad braking experience. Not too sure though, any inputs on this is much appreciated.
2) The manual power steering makes some liquid pumping noise when am trying to reverse my car and steering locked at the extreme ends and this noise comes from the steering wheel itself.
Any suggestions on this would be really helpful
Pictures would follow soon...