Getting home a new VW Tiguan: Our most expensive car

Other vehicles that we considered include Kia Seltos, Hyundai Creta, Tata Safari and Harrier, Mahindra Scorpio and XUV700, MG Hector and VW Virtus.

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Purchase Decision & Journey

• Safety: We are a family of 4 with 2 infants. When choosing a car, safety [active and passive] is the first priority.
• Cost Effectiveness: I had changed jobs recently. While my previous company had given us a 2023 Verna Turbo, this car had to be purchased from our own wallet. Was looking to minimise the pinch and probably get good resale value.
• Comfort: Considering the family's space requirements will increase over the next 5-7 years, the car should have comfortable seating.
• Driving Dynamics and a Sense of Occasion: Having owned a Polo GT TSI for 4 years, had always preferred the sorted driving dynamics of the Europeans. As our running distance was going to be low, we wanted a sense of occasion whenever we used our car. We have an Innova Crysta in the family which takes care of the grunt work.

Cars Considered

• Kia Seltos/Hyundai Creta/MG Hector: Rejected due to the image problem in Gurgaon and poor/untested safety. No offense to the readers owning these cars, however, they did not feel like ~22 lakhs OTR for top variants. We loved the huge feature list however did not meet the driving dynamics and sense of occasion criteria.
• Mahindra Scorpio/XUV 700: While they were great cars with tested safety, they met the driving dynamics criteria as well. However, they are not there as the Europeans, but pretty great to drive. We were not impressed with the switchgear and overall interior quality and felt that a bit of finesse was missing. Hyundai/Kia cabins felt way better. On the other hand, with their massive popularity, I am sure they will hold their values pretty well.
• Tata Safari/Harrier: NCR, Diesel enough said.

VW Taigun/Virtus

We had almost finalised the Virtus GT Plus and were ready to wait for the Curcuma Yellow colour. At the Gurugram showroom, we by chance ran into our campus batchmate [my wife and I were in the same engineering college] after 14 years who had a Tiguan. He seemed pretty satisfied with it.

We asked our SA for a TD and he arranged it immediately. I floored it on the GFR and was reminded of the beautiful TSI+DSG combo of my Polo GT [with nearly 2x the horses]. Had a hard braking moment as well, and was super impressed by the stability and braking dynamics.

The build quality and international acceptance of Tiguan meant that safety was taken care of as well. ADAS is missed, but not much as I am a sedate driver. We did miss ventilated seats in northern summers, and that’s a grouse that I will always have with VW product managers.

Deal making

MY 2023 Tiguans are available at great discounts. VW is offering a service pack of 4 years, which will reduce the servicing cost. I further negotiated with 4-5 dealers and settled the deal with VW Dwarka. They matched the insurance price and with an Extended Warranty, they came quite close to my target price. While we would have preferred Night Shade Blue, the Dolphin Grey colour also looked quite premium and we finalised it. Please note that Night Shade Blue and Kings Red are not available on MY 2023 models in NCR. Most dealers offered only White and Silver.

Final OTR: 34.89 Lakhs with Extended Warranty. Checked some used car websites and saw that this car is holding value well. Understandably so, there is no car in 30-40 L bracket which delivers luxury car value at half the price.

We took delivery within 1 week of booking, this was the time the car took for transit as per my SA. I have my doubts though. As when I was doing the T-BHP PDI, I found that there was some dust on the car. Also, when the car was in transit, I asked for the tracking link of the truck, and SA could not arrange that. Although the PDI was OK.

Delivery Process

The overall delivery process was tedious. VW seriously needs to work on their dealership experience beyond the jazzy furniture. We waited for a full day at the showroom for PDI+Delivery, even without financing, and there were delays at every step with no timeline available. Not the experience for purchasing such a high-value item, and we would prefer to forget the day.

In the end, we bought home our car and are happily pottering about in it. It is the most expensive car we have owned and I just love the value it delivers. Proper luxury car feels with white, great quality interiors, super quiet cabin and sorted, planted ride. The clean and Audi-like creases pleased everyone in the family and I did feel a bit of pride!

Note: Company Laptop doesn’t allow uploading pics, coming soon!

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