News
BHPian RoverX recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
"You have to reach for things beyond your grasp, or what is heaven for?" - Garth Stein
Now, this isn't a quote one would normally associate with material possessions, but one can agree that ownership of a vehicle is a very aspirational concept for most Indians. Realising that dream evokes the sentiment of having arrived in life, in a manner of speaking. With that, I would like to share a brief account of when this moment arrived in my life (my father's life, to be precise); an ownership report of Our Diminutive Darling! I've procrastinated on writing this for more than three years, but here it is!
P.S. All the opinions stated here are my own, and I mean no offence or disrespect to the proud owners of any of the cars mentioned below. Also, I've lost a good deal of the car's pictures due to the theft of one of my older phones, apologies in advance!
The year was 2007, and I had just completed my board exams. My dad, a civil engineer with the Govt. of Maharashtra, was transferred to a different department from Thane to Navi Mumbai. Since Navi Mumbai was much more accessible by road from our place than Thane, he was planning to finally let go off the local train commute after ~20 years and switch to a personal vehicle. Now make no mistake, a car purchase decision for a family man in his forties is way different from that for a corporate yuppie on the climb. It's always a head-over-heart affair, but truth be told, there weren't many cars back in the day this side of a million bucks on which one could 'set their hearts'. So the decision would be governed completely by practicality and budget, right? Heh, not so much when one has a budding BHPian as one's son!
I was the quintessential headache as well as the key influencer in making this decision. The constraints were pretty clear - it had to be a petrol hatch, reasonably spacious, and reasonably structurally sound (we were all grown-ups and NCAP ratings were an unknown quantity two decades ago). Budget was capped at INR 6 lakhs. As a typical Indian father who is a first-time car buyer, dad was veering towards the Maruti-Suzuki stable. Weird as it is, he had (and still has) a soft corner for the Omni! But I was looking for something for more than just 4 wheels and seats with a bodyshell; some amount of intangible connect.
The B1 segment hatchback market had just about started to heat up with the launch of the Maruti-Suzuki Swift (which was given a launch in a movie, no less). A hatchback buyer was being introduced to a variety of choices, from sporty and exciting Swift to mature and elegant Getz. The indecision was further compounded by several new launches that were happening.
I'd like to sum up the hatchback scenario back in 2007-08, below:
The car served us admirably, ever since. It was a no-nonsense ownership experience, meaning there wasn’t much to rave about, yet very little to complain about. The i10 has been a perfect little city commuter while handling the occasional long-distance duties. We have taken several trips out of the state in our little darling, to Goa, Karnataka, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh. But these trips were too few and far in between, and the car was mostly relegated to the bumper-to-bumper ordeal of the ever-growing Mumbai traffic, which it took in its stride very well. Of the 14 years that we had the car, I was away from home for around 7 years for education or work, and the wretched COVID claimed around 2 years, which is part of the reason why the car had a limited running of ~65,000 km. I low-key regret not being associated with the ownership of our i10 as closely as I would've liked!
I’ll take a pause now and let some pictures do the talking, now. As mentioned before, I lost a good chunk of the car’s pictures to the theft of my phone, and they were some of the most picturesque shots of this car. Nevertheless, I think the ones that I have capture the essence of my narrative.
The i10 came wearing quite contemporary clothes for 2007-08, and had several interesting design elements. The chunky front bumper, slim front grille, subtle chrome garnish, etc. made for a fresh new look, which says a lot for a car that was a successor to ugly ducklings, Santro and Santro Xing. Eagle-eyed BHPians would have noticed that the rub strips on the doors and front and rear bumpers are black in some photos while silver in others. As part of the repainting done post my accident, I decided to get them painted in the body colour since it lends a cleaner look to the panels. Ground clearance of 165 mm and the soft suspension (especially at the rear) meant the car bottomed out on occasion when fully loaded. It also made the ride pretty bouncy over uneven roads, and bump recovery was poor. This necessitated one to drive the car extra sedately as the ride could induce motion sickness in passengers.
There is no pretense of being sporty in the design, yet it's been crafted quite smartly. Again, we have to compare the design against its contemporaries at the time. I read several reviews of the i10 and the number that stuck with me was the drag coefficient of 0.32. This was pretty impressive for a tall-boy hatchback and implied performance and efficiency gains for the small 1.1 litre engine. This view also shows how weedy the 155-section tyres are.
A very inoffensive side profile. The fact that these 13-inch wheels do not look out of place in this design is proof of how compact this car is. The i10 had good enough headroom, thanks to the tall cabin. One can see how much further the tailgate opens above the car's roof, when opened! Note that the rear door handle is placed slightly above the front door handle. There are subtle creases on the front fender and the rear door, and the latter subtly flows into the rear bumper. The door handles would have looked much more coherent if these creases were a single line, cutting through both the door handles. This little detail has bugged my OCD for 14 long years! This design detail was incorporated in a much more pronounced way on the last-gen Santro sold here, albeit overdone.
Another measure of how dinky the i10 was. The entry to my parking space requires me to circle the building, navigate a narrow driveway (which is half taken up by bikes on the right, we can spot a white Honda City in that space, above). With the i10, I never broke a sweat doing this exercise and backing up into my space. This, with two scooters already parked in the space. These compact dimensions were part of the reason why I wanted to relegate this car strictly to city duties and upgrade to a diesel SUV!
Quite smartly styled rear end; the rising window-line gave it a tipped-forward stance. Flat, slanting tailgate and shape of the tail lights seem reminiscent of the original Santro. The i10 had one of the best integrated rear spoiler with high-mounted stop light, in my opinion. The external boot release was cleverly integrated into the Hyundai logo. Rear defogger, washer, and wiper were provided on Magna and Magna (O) trim levels. Notice the broken wiper arm? That's the work of an enraged biker who thought I was in the wrong for honking at him when he cut me off at a traffic signal. The replacement wiper arm was ordered from Amazon. The exhaust canister was clearly visible from the rear, and as we found out later, was susceptible to kisses from the road very often. The large and obviously placed 'Baby Onboard' sticker was applied after the arrival of my niece.
I fondly remember the simplistic times when dashboards were not dominated by large screens; there's something so fundamentally pure about uncluttered car interiors. Hyundai nailed it on the head with this one, except for all that beige on the top dash. One can see the annoying reflections on the windshield that I mentioned earlier. Placing the gear shifter on the dashboard extension was a stroke of genius - not only was it ergonomically better, but also freed up more space between the front seats. A few more cars of yesteryear offered such shifter placement (Honda CRV, Maruti-Suzuki Ritz, Nissan Evalia, etc.). Note the car charger placed in the 12V power socket - the 2010 facelift had a USB Type-A outlet next to it, as well as the relocated AUX port. Tall central AC vents had limited adjustment range, and were primarily used to direct airflow to the rear passengers. One can see the retractable sunshades in this picture that I mentioned before.
The quality of materials was very good at this price point, and not a thing had come loose or fallen of throughout the entire duration of ownership. Subtle design touches like the crease on the doors that runs through the dashboard in a single uninterrupted manner looks very elegant. The elbow rest area on the doors was painted brown and did not sport any soft finish. Lower half of the doorpads were painted beige and used to get soiled very easily. Interestingly, even the top-end Magna (O) variant did not get electrically adjustable and foldable mirrors at the time. It was only when the Asta variant debuted with the 1.2 Kappa engine that we saw power ORVMs on the i10. The housing for the ORVM adjustment mechanism was pretty large, and together with the thick A-pillar, would sometimes create blind spots on tight right-hand curves.
Somewhere in misty Mahabaleshwar. The i10 had been a trustworthy companion on all our outstation journeys, and never once left us stranded anywhere. The 67 BHP engine progressively kept feeling inadequate as the family grew in size and count.
Back in March 2015, on one of our trips to Tal Konkan, my sister spotted this heavily camouflaged Chevy Trailblazer and snapped a few pictures of that gargantuan SUV. I shared them with Autocar India, and these were published in their scoop story for the Trailblazer. Apparently, this was the first sighting of this car in India. At the toll booth, the stark contrast in the sizes of the Trailblazer and i10 was very evident!
Happy faces with an equally cheerful car!
Continue reading RoverX's ownership review for BHPian comments, insights and more information.