[WiseFool]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I have mentioned about the DL. I already have obtained mine before COVID. Even my wife has a DL. But no real car driving experience after obtaining license for both of us.

[Piyush Kanthak]

As a person suffering from slip disc, I would strongly suggest you an automatic car, my doctor has banned me from driving a manual.
It's better to take driving lessons, it will brush up all the basics. You may go the pre owned route spending no more than 3-4 lakhs, you may take lessons in this car too.

[gck_tourer]

Originally Posted by WiseFool

Secondly, I also request the community for inputs on the car options. I am 5'11 and having a budget of about 10L OTR. It will be mostly city driving and definitely trips over weekends, vacations, etc. since both of us are interested in driving as well as travelling. Further, I would prefer a car with good ground clearance and high seating since it may affect my disc issue (no to cars like indica), should have good service support as SCs tend to cheat customers by replacing parts unnecessarily.

Thanks if advance for all the inputs

Hi,

Since you are a newbie to driving I don't know how much would you prefer creature comforts over safety and robust mechanicals.

If driving pleasure, ride quality, engine responsiveness are primary requirements look no further than Citroen C3 Turbo. But it's available only in manual.

If you are looking at an automatic with with a few more creature comforts, safety rating and good turbo engine then you may look at Nissan Magnite or Renault Kiger.

But the service network of the above cars is sparse. If that is a deal breaker then you may want to stick to Maruti or Hyundai. Ignis and I10 would make the cut minus safety ratings which are pathetic for these cars. They have automatics and sit in your budget comfortably too.

[madrasilemon]

In my humble opinion, instead of spending close to a lakh on a rented car, please consider buying an automatic within your budget, a psuedo suv with decent height and ground clearance and learn driving on it. A zero depreciation cover is sufficient for your early days. If you learn in your own car, the worries are zero and you are answerable to none. Further, by the time you master your driving skills, you will be knowing in and out of your car, it's pros and cons. This will aid you further. Wish you all the best.

[deep_bang]

As many have suggested, buy a 10 year old wagon r/santro/ or any such tall boys for about 1 to 2 lakh. You can look at spinny/cars24 too. Use it for 2 to 3 years.

Buy EV after 3 years and enjoy super low running costs.

[sunnsood]

Sorry to say but you are overcomplicating the entire situation.

As mentioned by others in the forum,

You should first get the basics right so start with driving school. You may or may not like manual and would save on the rental. Once you know the basics, you can decide on manual or automatic. Then buy new. Me, my wife, my brother, and inlaws all learnt on brand new out of showroom cars so you can be no different.

Just ensure that who ever you learn driving from, also teaches you on public roads in your new car. For 10 days you can drive with someone accompanying you and then you can start solo trips to get the confidence.
Driving is 1 month effort especially for someone who drives scooters. My brother in law learnt on Kia Sonet iMT in flat 5 days.

There are plenty of manual and automatic in the 10lakh budget.

[KrisTvpm]

From personal experience & FWIW, please ponder over these:

* Rental cars are not in the top (heck, even passable) condition always; most specimens are absolutely misused over years, not serviced periodically etc.
To top it, the rentals charges are quite steep. At best, they could serve for short trips upto a week or so

* No driving school imparts 100% (heck, not even 70%) training to equip handle our roads. You WILL learn many things on the go, your 2wheeler riding experience helps ofcourse. For perspective, I learnt driving on my father's Fiat/PremierPadmini couple of decades back, along with a desi driving school "master" who taught me mostly wrong things incl. remove footwear while driving. To avoid these, I put my kid thru a renowned driving school franchise which offers simulated sessions apart from on-the-road coaching. No complaints, they coached her well, but when I take her out on my car, I see she still has to learn a LOT to be a roadworthy driver.

* Just personal opinion: As a learner, it makes sense to stick to a used car. This gives you confidence to firm up on practical knowledge, and most importantly it won't pinch your heart(and pocket) if(when) it earns its badges of honour -- scratches/dents etc. which are a given on our chaotic roads.

* You are planning for both you & your spouse to learn - again a case to prefer used car!

[hardilip]

Like most of them told here, rental cars will be heavy on pocket. Also you might need someone who knows to drive with you and your spouse till you get comfortable.

I am not sure it is be possible and right (ethically) but it worked for me. When I was learning, I used to get along well with the (from driving school) driver. I used to pay him like INR 50 / 100 on daily basis for which he gave me extra time of driving . Along with it, he also helped me to drive in very congested areas with bumper to bumper traffic, Up hill driving (stop and start), reverse, all types of parking and finally driving higher speeds (like 80+ - for this he came in a day very early and took me to a deserted area to do this).

This teaching was good and I was very comfortable. I had close to 6 - 8 months from the time I took my driving license to get my first car (Santro XO in 2005).

I drove the new car home (almost 10 kms in a city traffic) without any issue.

I would suggest if the above method works, try it out and once you are done with that, you can then try car rental on over the weekend if needed to stay in touch with your driving.

Manual is really fun to drive according to me. I was driving close to 50 kms a day in Bangalore traffic and working on the clutch in a bumper to bumper traffic is a pain. I am not sure with the slip disc if you can manage such a situation in case if you need too.

If it is not advisable, then Automatic is a best choice for you.

Regarding 2nd end car, in my person experience as much as we are comfortable driving a car you will be willing to get a newer one. If we have doubts above driving back in your mind we will always think about getting a 2nd end car to learn it well. End of the day its not that driving ability alone will help decide new vs 2nd according to me, it also depends on reliable 2nd car, condition / KMS driven, budget that you can spend on, when you want to replace and availability of the budget etc.

I had been given advice of owning a 2nd hand car to get myself familiar with driving but I cut all those went in for a new as I was confident back then.

All the best. Drive safe and have fun!

[SCORPION]

When you rent a self drive car, you rent someone else's property, to be used, taken care of, and returned, as far as possible, in the same condition as it was given to you. So that the next unsuspecting customer gets a clean and mechanically sound car which has not been abused by the previous customer. Well, at least that is what you would expect, when you rent your car from Revv, or Zoom, no? Or, would you like to have a car which someone used to 'learn' driving for 3, or 6 months? Or may be rental companies should have a special set of junk cars which they can rent out to people to learn driving at some insane pricing.

Unlike a second hand car, you don't get enough time to actually check the condition of a self drive car. I have seen people abusing 'black and yellow' number plate cars, because it doesn't belong to them. Not all of them, but at least a few, and this line of thought, IMO, is something similar.

Now that we are openly discussing this possibility, I guess they would take a cue from this thread. I hope they make the renting process tougher.

Most rental companies need a valid driving license issued not less than a year ago. Now I know one of the reasons why they have this clause.

But I am guessing, the way our driving tests go, and since you already have a motor cycle license, that you already have a valid LMV license.

[cryptarchy]

I would suggest you to join a driving school to learn the basics and also start looking for a new car in your budget. You don’t want any breaks after driving school lessons are finished. Somehow I don’t get this idea of buying an old car to learn driving. Any road worthy used car will cost you more than lac or two. If you buy a new car any minor damages during learning phase can be fixed in thousands.

[darkfantasy]

I was in the exact situation 3 years before. Me and my wife both had driving licenses, but apart from the driving school experience, we had zero real-world driving experience. It was the start of the covid, and the need for a car was sorely felt. We also checked used cars, but the prices made no sense.

We checked out a couple of cars (S-presso, Celerio, Santro, Grand i10, Tiago) but couldn't choose. So we decided we would go for the cheapest automatic available(S-Presso) at that time and then once we were confident we would upgrade to something bigger. Buying a Maruti also made sense since the resale value would be high. It was very easy to learn and gain confidence in the automatic because there is no risk of stalling and one can 100% focus on the road. As a newbie driver, you will get used to the AMT also. So in my opinion, you can buy any automatic and learn by yourself.

Also, better to buy the car you really love now, because it would be difficult to justify an upgrade later. We are also having difficulty, justifying anything new because of the recent price hikes and how well the S-presso fits our purpose. If you are hoping to hold on for 10 years and above, you should think ahead for say 5 years and choose a car that you'd be happy with at that time. It might mean raising the budget a little bit more than what you can afford right now but in the end, you'd end up saving money by retaining the same car longer.

[learning_cars]

Originally Posted by cryptarchy

I would suggest you to join a driving school to learn the basics and also start looking for a new car in your budget. You don’t want any breaks after driving school lessons are finished. Somehow I don’t get this idea of buying an old car to learn driving. Any road worthy used car will cost you more than lac or two. If you buy a new car any minor damages during learning phase can be fixed in thousands.

I agree with this. Old car for learning does not make much sense. Learn at driving school, get your new car and then pay the instuctor for a few more lessons on the new car and get used to it.

New cars have zero dep options which can be used to cover up those minor scuffles.

But, on the flip side, there are still reasons to buy an old car. I bought an old car to learn driving but I kept it for longer and will keep for a few more years. It helped me know what I really want/need in a car personally and will hopefully make a wiser decision when I buy my next car.

[WiseFool]

Originally Posted by Piyush Kanthak

As a person suffering from slip disc, I would strongly suggest you an automatic car, my doctor has banned me from driving a manual.
It's better to take driving lessons, it will brush up all the basics. You may go the pre owned route spending no more than 3-4 lakhs, you may take lessons in this car too.

I did initially consult with an Ortho and he gave me a lot of restrictions too. I have switched to Varma Kalai now. My friend's dad had a similar issue of L4, L5 and S1 a year back. He couldnt even stand and every major ortho said surgery was the only option. However with varma kalai he is almost back to normal now and is back to riding his Activa. Here they dont give any restrictions. Main thing is eating a lot of food with vitamin D, E and Calcium. Walking/ exercising daily.

From reading all the comments, I am tending towards taking lessons with Maruthi. They are charging 10k for about 20 hours of practical driving lessons (website info). Any normal driver is charging 500 per hour these days. In that sense this pricing seems fine.

My apartment does not have a car park right now and it has to be parked in the street only. Adding this to the mix, I am also thinking maybe its good to pick some used car from some trusted source like spinny, truevalue, etc. Learn on that, use for like 2-3 years and then upgrade. Need to discuss with family on the option first.

On a related note, I casually visited a Tata Showroom over the weekend and the rep mentioned Punch/ Nexon are available in a week's time. At the max 10 days. Is this true? I thought Nexon atleast had a wait time of 3-6 months.

[WiseFool]

Originally Posted by deep_bang

As many have suggested, buy a 10 year old wagon r/santro/ or any such tall boys for about 1 to 2 lakh. You can look at spinny/cars24 too. Use it for 2 to 3 years.

Buy EV after 3 years and enjoy super low running costs.

Hey I checked a few of these websites like spinny, cars24, olx, truevalue. But none of them seem to have something in the 1-2 lakh range. Even an Alto is starting around 2 or 2.5L. Like the members suggest here all the used cars are heavily priced thats the reason I was tending towards a new car.

Originally Posted by darkfantasy

I was in the exact situation 3 years before. Me and my wife both had driving licenses, but apart from the driving school experience, we had zero real-world driving experience. It was the start of the covid, and the need for a car was sorely felt. We also checked used cars, but the prices made no sense.

We checked out a couple of cars (S-presso, Celerio, Santro, Grand i10, Tiago) but couldn't choose. So we decided we would go for the cheapest automatic available(S-Presso) at that time and then once we were confident we would upgrade to something bigger. Buying a Maruti also made sense since the resale value would be high. It was very easy to learn and gain confidence in the automatic because there is no risk of stalling and one can 100% focus on the road. As a newbie driver, you will get used to the AMT also. So in my opinion, you can buy any automatic and learn by yourself.

Also, better to buy the car you really love now, because it would be difficult to justify an upgrade later. We are also having difficulty, justifying anything new because of the recent price hikes and how well the S-presso fits our purpose. If you are hoping to hold on for 10 years and above, you should think ahead for say 5 years and choose a car that you'd be happy with at that time. It might mean raising the budget a little bit more than what you can afford right now but in the end, you'd end up saving money by retaining the same car longer.

Hey bro noticed that your location is Chennai. Where are you put up and where all did you check out for pre-owned cars?

[Haldian]

I would suggest both of you to join a driving school to refresh your driving skills and continue till you have reasonable confidence.

Post which take a few self drive rental sessions on cars across range like low small hatch (say Alto), tall boys (say Santro, Wagon R, i10), medium / premium hatches ( Jazz, Baleno, Polo), Sedans (Honda City etc.) and Small - Medium SUVs (Punch, Sonet etc.). Where possible try out Manual vs Automatic for cars from same segment. Maybe, make it a weekend half day activity for both of you. Take notes and identify what is feeling like best suitable from your budget and family suitability perspective.

Once you zero in 3 -5 models, take test drive at dealership (again) and re-evaluate your options and maybe you get pleasantly surprised at soft clutch of newer generation cars if you prefer Manual gearbox for better connect with machine.

At this time, you would wonder to go for a 2nd hand car or a new one. I go with new car (having zero dep) as suggested by many above for the simple reason that good, low run, 2nd hand cars are usually not available - and a long wait will erode you of your recently acquired driving skills. Moreover, maintenance headaches may be present in 2nd hand cars and you would rather focus on connecting with machine than getting crash course on vehicle maintenance.

Whatever you end up purchasing, should be sufficient for initial 3-5 years if you purchase with proper evaluation and co-judgement. Changing a car is one costly affair.