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How I bought a used 2019 Rapid diesel; Complete ownership review

9th June 2024, 11:39 by Rahul Nagaraj

Fuel efficiency is also reasonable, 13- 15 in City and 20-22 on highway.

BHPian 5252rpm recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

This ownership report is going to be long and includes the pre-purchase, purchase saga, post-purchase, dilemmas and heart vs brain story of my first car purchase - the Skoda Rapid Diesel. This a preloved car, which I found through Cars24.

Ever since I can remember, I have been a car enthusiast. Like many of us here, I happen to be a "go-to" car person for many in my circle. Again, like many of us, my knowledge of these machines is primarily sourced from Team BHP. I started reading Team-BHP when my dad was purchasing his first car in 2010 and I wanted expert opinions on choosing between the WagonR K10B and Zen Estilo K10B. We, of course, went ahead with Wagon R and it has been doing great since then (still in our garage and clocked close to 80k km in its 14-year life). It took me another 10 years to be part of the forum, and I joined officially in 2020 when I was doing my PG.

Little about me

I hail from God's own Country and am a big fan of tastefully modified cars. Spent my childhood with scale models and identifying cars flying over NH 47. The love for cars sent me to mechanical engineering, then to IT giants' engineering services arm as an engineer, and finally to another ER&D player in their marketing department, where I currently work. Passion for the automotive industry has always been my trump card in all my interviews, be it jobs or post-graduation. I had tried all my life to convert my passion into a profession where I have taken hard decisions to let go of opportunities, but by God's grace, I am doing marketing for transportation now. So yes, I speak, write, hear and smell automobiles 24x7 and I use these in my day job as well. I genuinely think that this part of my life is happiness.

My automotive dump

The first car that we owned was a 2010 Wagon R VXI in superior white, which is happily serving us. My fondest and most blissful memory with cars involves a white '01 Maruti 800 DX. Then other cars I have closely encountered are a cherry red '04 Maruti 800 AC (the car I took baby steps of driving in), followed by a '09 Swift VDI ABS (red- still with us), '10 Honda City VMT (cherry red - still with us), '10 Chevrolet Spark 1.0 PS (cherry red - sold), '13 Ford Figo EXI TDCI ( white - still with us) and '16 Honda Jazz 1.5D (white - still with us). All these cars were owned by my extended family. I got to drive them extensively and I loved them to bits irrespective of what they offered on paper. These are my soul cars, but this write-up is majorly going to be on my prized possession, my preloved Skoda Rapid TDI MT - from the last batch of OG VAG diesel.

Apart from cars, I developed an affinity towards bikes in college, which I got from the riding feel of the Duke 200, FZ, Apache RTR180, RE Classic and Pulsar 180 belonging to my friends. I was happily riding my dad's '99 Splendor then and did not have the guts to ask my parents to buy me a bike. I had to wait until my first job, where I saved to pick up another preowned charm, which is a '16 CBR 250R ABS in 2018. The joy of biking was and is my happy pill and the CBR with all its strengths gave me immense pleasure, memories, adrenaline, thrill and fun. That story calls for a separate ownership thread, which I might not create due to a lack of fine details. I had no clue back then that I would make it to becoming a member of Team-BHP, otherwise could have captured the finest details.

So yes, both of my automotive purchases are preowned and thanks to this team BHP thread, which I stumbled upon a couple of years back.

I intend to spread my purchase story into multiple parts, namely:

Dilemma- Options, Test drives
Pre-Purchase and Delivery
Post Purchase checks and balances
Review

Here is a quick overview of my overall rapid experience. It is covered in detail in the review section.

Yay

The engine is the strongest link in the package. EA189 engine is an old-school diesel but punches above its weight. Full load? No problem, it keeps pulling while delivering decent fuel efficiency. Decent handling as well.
Excellent mod potential. Lots of bolt-on mods are available. A simple remap should take it into the league of cars that are 2-3 segments higher. Lots of aftermarket parts are available.
Build quality is of yesteryear cars. Strong body panels, reassuring door thuds. Comfortable seating for 4 people on board, but 5th one is unwelcome.
Compact enough w.r.t. width and length. City-friendly by sedan standards.
Design, though old, has aged gracefully. Lapiz Blue shade tends to get dirty quickly but when clean, is a looker. Also, the paint quality is top-notch.

Nay

Prone to part failures like most VAG cars. From interior trims to switchgear to power windows to ABS sensors to water pumps to injectors to brake rotors to pads, many critical parts tend to fail as per many ownership histories. The car requires proactive maintenance and pampering unlike Japs. It tends to fail, despite this.
Heavy clutch becomes cumbersome in B2B traffic. Also, dieselgate scandal-related fixes have made the engine sluggish at the low end, which makes you shift extra gears. Highways are the natural habitat.
Expensive parts and service compared to peers, at authorized as well as third-party garages.
Quite dated. Originally launched in 2010 as VW Vento and based on 2009 VW Polo. Designs and themes are a minimum of 15 years old! No wow feeling inside the cabin as such.
Missing features like cruise control, and automatic headlamps (can be retrofitted though). Would be nice to have features such as additional airbags, esp, traction control etc.