10000km up on my Grand Vitara mild hybrid: Updates post 3rd service

In terms of performance yes the power is a little less and it doesn’t match up with how rest of the car has been set up.

BHPian TrueSagittarian recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

It’s been quite some time since my last post, been quite busy with life and to be exact till 2nd service I didn’t feel like I had driven the car much for a proper long-term experience, so I chose to wait till 3rd service.

So here it goes. In my last update on 9th March 2023, the odo was at 1350 kms and today 8th Nov 2023 the odo reading marks 10238 kms. In between I had several short trips to other cities and one long trip to Himachal. As I have WFH so mostly I drive on weekends only and the round trip usually ends up being around 100 kms. After 1st service in March, it was mostly weekend city driving and I took one trip in April to Kotdwar for a friend’s wedding, I had five people in car including me and boot completely full of luggage. The route is same which I mentioned in my first post and the car performed well enough with full load I would say. There was no lack of power in terms of highway cruising and careful overtaking. Three passengers (medium build) sitting in the back were very happy with car and they had no issues whatsoever in terms of space and comfort. My next short trip was in June first week to The City Beautiful – Chandigarh, it is my maternal home, just a quick short weekend to meet up with my cousins and hang around. As expected, a smooth trip and no issues with car whatsoever.

In between these two trips a lot of city driving was done, In June itself I sent the car for 2nd service and as always it was quick and no fuss, Maruti’s service track has always been great and will remain great that’s why they sell the most cars in almost every segment. In these 5k Kms I had no major issues with the car it ran smoothly, I faced issue with android auto in which my voice on calls was not audible to the other person and I checked this with multiple people they were not able not hear anything from my end, but it was fine with Bluetooth only mode, I got the software updated from service centre and it has been working fine since, other than this issue the head unit and android auto works flawlessly even switching between the devices is also very smooth, there are modes also for phone connectivity that if you want android auto or just a bluetooth connection, yes there are times when it fails to auto connect or identify phone but that is very rare, and it resolves after ignition off and on but in that case also your Bluetooth connectivity will be there. Auto start stop also works perfectly I think as I have come to understand it. It always keeps some battery power in reserve for ignition on and off, I have never seen the battery level drop less than two or three bars, for e.g. : if you stop at lights and the ignition turns off the first thing it’ll do is that it’ll turn off the AC and yes in summers it is irritating because you won’t notice that only blowers are working until they throw hot air on your face. However, if you turn ac back on manually it’ll start the engine or if your head unit is playing music at a higher volume, basically if your car is drawing more power than it can be run on battery, or if it’ll make the battery go to reserve levels it’ll use engine power that’s it. This viewpoint is just from my observation only I have not researched or have any technical data to prove this I could be wrong also, any folks with more knowledge to this feature are welcome to enlighten me. I have found this feature useful only.

After second service, I did a couple of trips to Chandigarh and majorly city driving in Delhi NCR, and recently did a long trip to Tirthan valley, Himachal in October. It was exactly 1k Kms round trip, The car performed well on climbs, and is easily manoeuvrable on sharp turns. I didn’t take the car to Jalori pass which could have been a real test for the car and for me also as I was the only driver and I have less experience on driving such steep height and slopes as I didn’t want any mishap to happen maybe next time when there is someone more experienced is with me.

The car went for 3rd service on 31st October, it was just usual experience this time also.

Cons and design issues which I have found in the 10k kms of driving and I think are major are listed below:

• Zero visibility from A pillar, it can hide an elephant behind it, and you won’t notice until you’re about to hit it. It is too thick, and it absolutely becomes a blind spot in corners or right turns, several times I got lucky that just in last moment I saw a biker or a person whom I was about to hit, and they were not a bit visible, you must lean towards the driver side window to look. I think it’s because of the side mirrors being to close to pillars and if you have rain visors installed then it is adding up to the problem only.
• Foot AC vents throwing more air on legs than the face vents. Yes, this is an issue in GV and it is a design error, a lot of people won’t be able to understand this but If you have tried to find a sweet spot in balancing the AC flow by turning on both the face and foot vents then you’ll get my point. In GV when you turn the foot vents on, the air flow drastically reduces from face vents as if there is no air flow from them and in couple of minutes or so your feet will start freezing up and you will turn off the foot vents. I got this checked in service centre in other GV’s also, same thing. I asked this question to one of the Powerdrift YouTube channel presenter as they recently got the hybrid version, he confirmed the same.
• Door pockets bottle holder section could have bigger to hold one ltr flasks and on back doors why just a bottle holder, could have easily accommodated the complete door bin.
• 360-degree camera should have been provided, considering the blind spots I feel like this.
• Remote AC option is only available in automatic.

Well to GV it is a great car to drive and live with, till now the car has been consistent in terms of ride quality and comfort. In terms of performance yes the power is a little less and it doesn’t match up with how rest of the car has been set up, I felt this especially after this long trip to Himachal, as on my way back, I was so used to the power output that it started feeling dull to me, or may be it is just me or when you drive to such long routes. For overtaking you can always drop a gear and get the power down as the engine can rev to quite higher rpms easily. No rattling or squeaking sounds yet, and I have driven the car in rough patches quite hard I would say, it just handles them fine. I'll end the post here with a picture from inside the car.

Thank you!

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