Farewell to my Honda Brio: Sold after 9 years & 40,000 km

As soon as I received the money in my account, I became very emotional and sad. The realization that Brio is not mine anymore sank into me.

BHPian chanz2015 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Recently, I bid farewell to my first car and companion for 9 years, my beloved Honda Brio SMT.

I never thought I would be emotional. But the moment I got confirmation on the sale, I got tearful. Brio was the first asset that I owned. It was a dream of many years, and to make it a reality, I had to work really hard. So many memories are attached to it.

How I bought the car in its entirety is a story.

Selecting and Buying experience

It was year 2015. It has been 6 months on my new job. Daily commute to office, weekend trips to mall and hometowns were getting very uncomfortable with public transport. The Autorickshaw rides were extremely irritating. By January end, me and my wife decided we should buy a car. Only one problem, both of us does not know driving

Anyway, I joined a nearby driving school and also started visiting car showrooms in parallel. We fixed the budget to be 5 lakhs. Cars we were considering

• Celerio
• Ritz
• i10 Grand
• Brio
• Micra/Pulse
• Punto

Also considered Toyota Liva briefly, but it was above my budget, so dropped it.

As part initial inquiries, called Nissan, and Renault showrooms. The executive at Renault does not know if the pulse was still being delivered or not. A Nissan executive said he would call back but never did. So I dropped those from the list.

I soon had to drop Ritz as well. I connected with three Maruti showrooms in Kochi, and none of them had Ritz for a test drive. Only one had the car on display. When I went to check it out, he tried to convince me to take Swift. Swift was never considered, as both of us felt claustrophobic inside.

Test driving & selection process

As I said earlier, I was still learning to drive. So I had to find a way to do the test drive. My team lead was also car crazy, and he was ready to do it. So we decided he would do the test drives on all cars and let me know his thoughts.

• Celerio. The test drive car was pathetic in condition. The passenger seat backrest was broken. It was in an upright position and couldn't be changed. Also, my friend didn't like the AMT. Also, AMT was very new. So it was dropped soon.
• Brio and i10 Grand. Brio was an actual test drive car and was maintained in pristine condition. Grand was a delivery car on the way to Kotayam. I didn't like the approach of the showroom, but I let it go anyway.

After the test drive of both, my friends review was this: If you want a peppy fun to drive car, go for Brio. If you want a family car, go for Grand.

So it was decided to choose between Brio and Grand.

Then we started the final scrutiny. My wife was more inclined toward Grand and I was toward Brio.

We visited the Hyundai showroom to finalize the price and other details. I don't remember the Grand i10 model. But it was lacking an audio system and speakers. The showroom was ready to provide us with an audio system and two speakers as an add-on. They quoted the price of the audio system at 7k. When I searched online, the audio system they mentioned only cost around 2K. So I asked about upgrading the system to a branded one and paying the difference, but they were not ready to do that.

Then I went to the Honda showroom. The executive was very knowledgeable. He showed the durability of the glass hatch by slamming it very hard (I was scared as hell when he did that). As I said, my wife was not so interested in Brio especially because of its shape. But once she entered the car, she was blown away by the interior and how roomy it was. We had zeroed in on the Brio SMT version. It included 2-din audio and four speakers. Also had audio controls on the steering wheel.

We still couldn't finalize which car to book. Both showrooms had given us less than 2 weeks of waiting. By the time I got my driver’s license too.

I went through the team-BHP review of the Grand i10 and Brio multiple times. For me, it was head vs. heart. My heart wanted Brio, and my head wanted the practicality of Grand.

Finally, the day to book the car came. So both the Hyundai and Honda showrooms were on the same route from my home. We were still confused about which car to get, but we got on the bus anyway. As soon as the bus conductor asked us for the destination, I blurted out the stop name of the Honda showroom, and that’s how I decided on the car I was going to buy.

We booked Honda Brio SMT. Color red was chosen. Here is the final quote:

I was given an offer to select accessories worth 12K. I selected mats, under body coating, rear sensor, mud flaps, bumber protector etc. We asked for the car to be delivered befor April 14th of that year(Vishu)

The executive called us on 11th/12th(I don't remember the exact date) and told the car arrived at depo. We went to do a PDI and was satisfied.

The loan amount was cleared and we targetted a delivery on 13th. But the RTO had other plans. They delayed the registration asking for some papers and. Finally the registration was done on 20th delivery on 22nd.

The bumber protectors and number plate was not ready on the delivery date. The service person came to our home next day and fitted the number plate. Bumper protectors were fitted at the time of 1st service

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