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Sold my Slavia 1.0 AT in less than 2 yrs & bought a Virtus 1.5 GT DSG

6th June 2024, 11:58 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

Before making the call, I test drove many cars like the Honda City hybrid and Elevate, Kia Sonet and Seltos. I also tried the MG ZS EV, Tata Nexon EV and Punch EV.

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It all began with me selling my good old Punto D and picking up an Abarth Punto as my daily drive. I always wanted to own an Abarth Punto and it just so happened that I found a well-maintained, low-run Abarth back in 2021 and it was an instant love and ended up purchasing it quickly.

My story with the Abarth continued just for 11000 kms in little over a year. This was the time when WFH / Hybrid work was still the norm. So continuing to use a manual didn’t really bother me much. Slowly that started to change in 2022, my workplace started to mandate working from the office 3 days a week and slowly changed to a full 5 days. This was the time I started to wonder if I should switch to an automatic.

Fast forward to April 2022, Slavia was launched. I loved the looks of the car and when I test drove the 1.5 DSG, I knew that was the car to buy if I were to pick an automatic.

I got a good deal for my Abarth and I ended up selling it.

Salvia 1.5 DSG had a longish wait of 3 months and there was no guarantee if there could be further delays due to the Ukraine war. Decided to test drive Slavia 1.0 AT TSI and I liked the effortless drive and the immediate delivery made it more enticing.

Long story short, I ended up buying it in May 2022.

I did enjoy driving the Slavia 1.0 AT. It was very effortless to drive and had adequate power to drive in the city and I have done multiple highway trips from Hyderabad to Bangalore, Chikmangalore, Udupi, Goa, Varanasi, Agra, Jaipur, and more!

I clocked 30000 kms in less than 2 years of my ownership. All this while I continued to wonder how much happier I would have been if I had picked the 1.5 instead.

That itch continued to grow further as days progressed and the AC not being effective in the summers despite the ventilated seats left me frustrated. And the car had too many squeaks in the dashboard which never got resolved after multiple attempts at the service center which added fuel to it. The 3-cylinder clatter always bothered me too. Finally, I ended up selling the Slavia in mid-March 2024.

This time I decided to think thoroughly about buying the replacement car. Thankfully my brother and my cousin offered me their cars for my work travels to help me take time to decide on my next car. So I took extra long time to decide!

I have test-driven the following cars:

Sonet D AT

Well-rounded car, Good interiors. Test drove a couple of times, but wasn’t feeling comfortable due to the much smaller size than Slavia. But mainly rejected it as I wasn’t confident to drive it daily with the Diesel clatter always running. Though Kia/Hyundai had the most refined diesels, I knew I’d be annoyed soon. And also unknown safety is something I couldn’t look past.

Seltos D AT/Creta D AT:

Well-packaged cars and great interiors. Effortless to drive and ADAS felt good in blind side detection, collision warning etc. However, same reasons as above Diesel clatter and unknown safety ratings didn’t work in their favour either. I didn’t consider Petrol ATs from Kia/Hyundai as I was 100% sure that for petrol I’d only pick Škoda/VW 2.0 cars.

Honda City Hybrid

I genuinely thought I would love this car before driving it. However, somehow I didn’t connect with the car at all and the drive felt underwhelming. Small broken patches felt like I was being thrown off the road. I test drove this on the same patch where Sonet, Seltos, and ZS EV and I immediately felt this wasn’t it for me. Also, a significantly smaller boot didn’t help.

Honda Elevate CVT

This was an unexpected TD I did out of nowhere and I enjoyed the drive and also liked the simple yet classy interiors. Too much hood visibility isn’t to my liking and I knew this wasn’t the car for me.

Toyota Hyryder (rejected before TD)

No offence to anyone, I couldn’t think of paying such a premium and getting not-so-good interiors. And somehow the middle passenger seat belt dangling from the roof and extremely thin sunroof cover didn’t impress me at all. And in our extremely hot summers, I can’t imagine driving with sunlight peaking inside all the time. Not sure why they chose to have such a thin fabric for the roof!

MG ZS EV

Loved the drive and the interiors were great too. However, EVs are not really there for real highway trips I’d love to do. Which basically meant no EVs yet for me.

Nexon EV

Good interiors and great drive, but just that the EVs are not really there for highway trips. How I wish we could recharge up to 90% in 30 min! One can only dream about it for now.

Punch EV

Good interiors and very good drive, rejected due to the same reasons as other EVs.

Slavia 1.5 DSG

One test drive and I knew what I missed in my 1.0 AT. Just loved it and this is the car I enjoyed driving very much and I could have gone with Slavia or Virtus and been very happy. Both cars look and drive great.

Taigun 1.5 DSG

Loved the drive, costs the same as Virtus after discounts and essentially it just came down to the looks and space offered. My wife said why small boot when paying the same as Virtus?

In my 2 years with Slavia driving over various types of road conditions, with 4 people on board and boot filled to the limit, I never scraped it. So I was confident, I’d be fine with the sedan as both Slavia and Virtus had very good ground clearance for a sedan, it’s almost as much as a small SUV.

Virtus 1.5 DSG

Amazing drive! Loved the looks, especially the exterior. This felt like I was going back in time and picking up my first love Polo! (Which I never bought, story for another day!)

Liked Slavia interiors slightly more, but I was fine with Virtus interiors as well. And my memory reminded me of creaks in Slavia which didn’t work in its favour. (Virtus is not free of it either, more on this at a later time!).

Deciding on the color was the final step.

Although I'm very fond of black cars, the Rising Blue and Lava Blue caught my eye. After some deliberation and seeing the Lava Blue in daylight, I realized it wasn't the color for me. I finally settled on Black and after a thorough PDI, finalised on the Feb 24 manufactured car with 26 km on the odo. Got the Trumpet horn, mud-flaps and car cover included in the on-road price.

Bought 7D mats from the showroom itself. Also, swapped wipers with Bosch ones at Shell.

It’s over two months now and clocked 2500 kms so far. Got the welcome service done and the underbody anti-rust treatment at the service center. This probably wasn’t necessary, but decided to go with it as I am planning to keep the car for a long time.