How We Bought a Car in Bangalore and Became Nomads

Buying a New Car Vs Used Car in Bangalore (Karnataka), Deciding On a Car, and Booking a Car in Bangalore

I wrote this piece in January 2021, when I was looking for a car. Publishing it now with minor grammatical errors. I am sure many things such as prices and car models would have changed, but the basic ideas regarding new car versus used car, how to trust old car dealers, how to do proper due diligence, which car model to choose, how to book a car in Bangalore, what kind of discounts run, how to negotiate the prices of old cars, insurance and extended warranties, car delivery timelines, etc would be the same. Take what you need and leave the information that is not applicable to you or has changed.

Good luck and drive safe. Enjoy 🙂

My partner, Sagar, and I are novice car people. We decided to buy a car so that we can travel around India. The pandemic made us stay put in our country, though we don’t think that any one of us is tied to a country, a boundary. It is true that who we are, how we think, and what we do are inspired by our surroundings and place of origin. I would have been a different person if I were from somewhere else.

Staying in India has been made, sort of, mandatory by the coronavirus. I don’t want to book tickets or cross borders when every country has all these new rules, and no one is sure about anything. Recently, a friend of mine traveled to the Andaman Islands. Despite having a negative coronavirus test result, he was stressed at the airport. The authorities told him that his report was not uploaded on the central database. He coordinated with the lab and asked them to put his reports online. They should have already done so, but we are humans and humans make mistakes.

Amidst the visas, new restrictions, COVID tests, limited activities, fear of getting stuck, unpredictability of the situation, and the disease that has spread around the world, I do not want to go outside India into unfamiliar territories where everything would be out of our control.

Given we have to stay within India, we would need some kind of transport. We don’t like taking flights, unless I’m flying internationally, when I can sleep, watch movies, and eat for thirty hours straight (hello, South America). We did not want to be dependent on public transport all the time, so we decided to buy a car.

We have additional reasons to buy a car, too. Sagar and I are road trip lovers. I haven’t driven since the driving course I took six years ago. He doesn’t like to go on long drives alone, but together we both love to be on the road. I can sit for days and gaze at the passing scenery. I’m the navigator, the radio jockey, the DJ, the buyer, the entertainer, and a nostalgic storyteller.

So when we decided to spend the year exploring India, we both are remote workers—my partner has a remote job, and I’m a writer who can work from anywhere—we decided to buy a car.

I will tell you how all of this exploded.

Our initial plan was to shift out of our current rooftop place to rent yet another tiny space in Bangalore, putting our electronic items and furniture there, buying a secondhand car or continuing our Zap subscription, and traveling through India. Woah! That’s already a great plan. Ain’t it?

But we never plan, and now you will understand why we don’t and why we shouldn’t. We never stick to our plans. Sagar has a history of making plans and following them. He is an okay-with-all kind of guy. But I don’t make plans, or if I make them, I don’t see to them. My plans change as does the color of the sky.

So while on 11 January we started house hunting, by 27 January, we had sold most of our furniture and electronic gadgets, had stopped looking at NoBroker, our bags were mostly packed, we had left the idea of a ZAP subscription and purchasing an old car, and, wait for it, had paid the deposit for a new SWIFT car.

WOAH!

This was a bit too much for us, too.

So this is how it all unravelled.

While we were looking for small, cheap 2BHKs in obscure areas of Bangalore, my partner was unhappy. And while he looked at apartments in HSR, Koramangala, and Indiranagar, I was disappointed.

He didn’t want to stay in a dingy and small place, and I didn’t want to stay in Bangalore at all. So while I was thinking of using the rented apartment for maybe a week or two weeks at a time, he thought of staying for longer when he didn’t want to travel.

We both took a day off and visited houses around Bangalore. We saw only two places: both dark, ugly, dirty, and came with such surroundings that we got depressed. One didn’t have power as the landlord had forgotten to pay the electricity bill. His house had been vacant for two months. Various things were broken, and the toilet was squat. Of course, he had forgotten to mention that to us on the call. The apartment society in Bangalore was located in Electronic City and had more than 1200 tiny flats. Some 440 square feet, 540, 620, 800, and so on. While checking out these tiny apartments, I felt that an entire lifetime in such a small space would be too much for anyone.

I respect the families who can manage living in that tiny space with every member and neighbor living with their own judgments, prejudices, priorities, and schedules. That is why perhaps people living together start behaving alike. Their shadows fall on each other, mixing and churning them into one species, which is the family.

In that apartment society, children played outside while mothers watched them distractedly, talking over the phone or gossiping amongst each other while pacing near the playground. The elderly walked around the complex in groups. Some people sat quietly, soaking in the sun. A few were buying groceries and drinking tea from the store at the main gate of the complex. There was a lot of life in that small space. Tall buildings stood neck to neck, housing hundreds and thousands of people. We walked through the complex and thought about what we wanted to do. Our hopes of living there after inspecting that apartment had died a quick death. We took a cab to HSR and darted to the TBC lounge to gulp down some guava marys. How pathetic of us!

Meanwhile, we called a friend and explained our plans. The car was the main thing now. In the absence of a home, a car would provide shelter.

So we focused our energy on selling our stuff and finding a car.

Since this piece is on buying a car in Bangalore, I won’t focus on the other aspects of moving out. I will write about moving out in another piece.

It was the Makar Sakranti holiday. But we weren’t thinking of making yellow rice as per the tradition. We were upset at each other for wanting different things. I had done my time in Bangalore, and Sagar doesn’t care about the place as much as he cares about his comfort.

He said he didn’t want to rent a place anywhere in Bangalore.

“Why?”

“None of the places are going to make us happy. We can move out of the city completely and find our space somewhere else. We would have the car, and we can plan to get our own place somewhere near the beach or in the mountains.”

How clichéd, right? But mountains and beaches are clichéd for a reason. A Mumbai boy, Sagar loves to be near the ocean or a water source. He prefers Goa. I’m more open, but mountains have always felt like home to me. I also like coastal towns, though, and so Goa could be our place. Or we could divide our time between the two, one foot here and one there.

For now, it would be the car, and we would travel the next year, living in different places of India.

Would we get a new car or a used car? We decided on a used car to save money. Our idea was to sell the car in two years and travel outside of India. We wouldn’t buy a heavily used car. We would look for a car having run up to 20,000 km max.

There were many slightly used cars at the secondhand car dealerships ubiquitous around Bangalore. PreCarMart, Car Dekho, Revv, Olx, Quickr, Cars24, CarWale, CarTrade, AutoPortal, etc.

As we searched on the portals, it became obvious that we shouldn’t buy a car from the dealer. Middlemen in the car market are known for replacing official car parts with local machinery, changing the kilometres, painting over the hideous scraps, and selling the car at a price much higher than its value. These dealerships are businesses, and businesses want to make money. After visiting PreCarMart and Revv and talking to salesmen from both and doing test drives, we understood that to buy a secondhand car, we would have to do a lot of diligence and investigation. We would have to be vigilant.

PreCarMart showroom near the 27th Main Road, where a driver told us he could give us the car for I forgot. We decided on a Swift. It is a good car, with great mileage, a strong 4-cylinder engine, and runs well on both easy and rough roads. We liked the design, too.

Amongst the many models, we finalised the ZXI automatic model. Some videos on Youtube explained how LXI misses key features, VXI is okay but still doesn’t have some of the main features, ZXI comes equipped with many must have features, and ZXI+ has features above and beyond ZXI. But it is not worth paying 80k or 1 lac just for those extra ZXI+ features.

We chose automatic because we would do long road trips and not drive the car so much within a city. Automatic would serve as well.

We would have to find an individual seller amongst the list of sellers. Most listings were from car dealers who had registered on the website with their company name or personal name. Unless you talked to them or asked them explicitly or checked their profiles, you wouldn’t know if you were dealing with an individual or a dealer.

All people sell their car to dealers because dealers offer an early exit to the owners and promise to take care of everything. They come home, collect the car, and take it. And who doesn’t want to get out of bureaucracy and basic admin work as soon as possible? So most cars would be from dealers.

Some cars would be bank-owned. These cars are recovered from the owners who defaulted on their car loans.  

Why is a dealer better than an individual? Or vice-versa.

Now you might ask: when it is this obvious that car dealers do fraud, then why do people buy from them?

Car dealers always say that individuals shouldn’t buy from personal sellers. Individual sellers say that used car dealers are frauds.

Who is right amongst the two?

You can’t trust anyone when it comes to money.

A car dealer like PreCarMart or Revv might change the kilometre count because then the car will sell for more. But they are so big and well-established? By that logic, Maggie noodles should never have had adulterated content in them. Johnsons and Baby’s soap had cancerous particles, and it is a giant. Or bigger companies such as Amazon give defective products many times. Banks such as HDFC and CITI have hidden policies that benefit the bank only. Big companies don’t always guarantee a great experience.

NestAway, Oyo, or Treebo are big, but the individual hotel experience depends on the individual property and the people and staff running it. The same is with the car dealerships.

Apart from changing kilometres, dealers also change parts, hide the history of service done from smaller garages, and charge an exorbitant amount to present the car to you. They need to cover their bills and pay their employees.

The first Swift we drove was alright, but its price wasn’t low. We had already decided we wouldn’t buy from second-hand dealers and were only talking to them for the experience.

We searched online and test-drove cars with Revv and PreCarMart—both of which have offices throughout India. PreCarMart was giving us a car that was driven 8000 kilometres for INR 760,000. It was automatic, but didn’t have the reverse car park camera and the infotainment centre.

The price they had quoted was 799,000 something. It was a 2019 model.

The seller would have done the registration and everything—that is their selling point.

How much time does it take to get the car transferred to our names? They said it would take about fifteen to twenty days. Some said it would take five days or two days. The answers were as varied as the size of the moustaches of these men.

If we buy from an individual holder, we would have to do everything ourselves. That is a big disadvantage for some buyers. Remember, you can always take the help of an agent and get this done yourself.

In terms of the pricing of the car, the SWIFT model didn’t show much deprecation. So the ex-showroom price of the ZXI automatic model of the SWIFT car was 7.25. But the online and in-person prices of second-hand cars that had ran up to 10,000 km started from seven lac and went above. None of the cars were registered below seven.

So, the on-road price with the new car, on-road tax, registration, and insurance (one-year comprehensive and two-year third party) came out to be about INR 860,000.

On top of the old car, you would have to spend for insurance, registration transfer, and servicing plus cleaning or any upgrades, et cetera. This would easily come out to be 7.4 or something.

You have a window of 1.20 lacs between a used car and a new car. These cars were 2018 models or above. Some had slight scratches too, and of course, the interiors scream out I’m used, I’m used.

If you are short on cash or want to get the cheapest vehicle, then I would recommend you choose a more affordable car, a second-hand car of another type, or the VXI model of the Swift. But a second-hand ZXI automatic didn’t make any sense.

Were these people ready to negotiate? Second-hand car dealers weren’t going lower than seven and a half, and most individual owners had a hard stop at seven.

So we decided to buy a new car and not a second-hand car.

But if you are selecting a second-hand car, I am listing some key features and points that we were looking at and you should pay attention to,

1. car body—look for rust, repaint, scratches, et cetera.
2. engine—Rusted, parts changed, engine oil, etc
3. kilometers driven
4. Does the car start and stop easily?
5. any sounds while driving
6. incline and slope performance
7. car service history
8. accidental history
9. any pending car challan

Check the RC information. There are websites to see a car’s history.

Also, check a little bit about the owner. Look at the ex-showroom price of the car and the on-road price of the new variant of the car you want to buy. A ten percent depreciation every year is expected on any car model.

Understand how the market works by visiting a few new and used car showrooms. Subscription models are also a possibility that I will explain in another article because that is how we drove about 10,000 km without either buying a car or paying any rent.

Now, when you are sure about the car model, decide between a second-hand car and a new one. In hindsight, using the hindsight bias, I would have followed these steps.

Secondhand comes with its own caveats, but if that is what you can afford, go for it. Many people sell their good cars while moving out of the country or shifting to a new city. These cars, sometimes almost new, are sold at competitive prices because the owners are in a hurry. Try for the latest model and make.

Prefer individual sellers over dealers. But do your due diligence in both scenarios. Talk to the seller a couple of times. Meet him and take a test drive. Never seem too desperate to buy the car. Have at least a month’s time at your hand to decide. You may make the wrong deal in a hurry.

Filter out the third-owner cars because you will not know the history of the first owner and will have to trust the information given by the second owner. Maybe he was cheated and wants to get rid of the car at about the same price that he had paid.

Use these filters to choose your car:

1. model
2. second or first owner owned
3. petrol or diesel
4. kilometers driven
5. year, model, and make
6. automatic transmission or manual

Some other things to think about:

Is the car owned by a dealer or an individual?

Any accidental history?

Were any upgrades done by the owner?

For how long has the car been listed on the sale platform? Why hasn’t it been sold?

What is the car’s service history?

Go for one or two test drives. Get a trustworthy mechanic to check the car and see what they think about it.

Do not go for discontinued cars. The Maruti Suzuki diesel cars have been discontinued since December 2020. The company wants to fit into the more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly models.

While looking for secondhand cars, we looked through many online portals and offline shops. After applying our filters: automatic, swift, 2018 or later, within 25,000 km, first-owner owned, we got only a few options. But as soon as we started removing the dealer-owned cars, we were only left with a couple of options.

You can get the number of the seller by selecting the option to talk to the seller. Some would outright tell you that they won’t go below a certain price. After eliminating the cars beyond our budget, we were left with two to three cars. One of those cars were overpriced, and the owner didn’t want to go below six lacs for a VXI whose ex-showroom price was six also.

Another car was the ZXI automatic, fitted with a reverse parking camera, driven 11,000 km, and insured until June 2022. We had taken a test drive and liked the car. The color was midnight blue, which we liked as well. He had quoted the price of 7.8 on Olx, posted the advertisement on Jan 3, and said he had gotten the car inspected by a secondhand car dealership. They had quoted the price and value as 6.9 lacs.  

Then why didn’t he give the car to that agency, I asked. He said that he didn’t want to give it to a dealer. I understood that and respected the guy. This conversation happened over a phone call. When we met him for a test drive, he was about an hour late. He didn’t apologize for being late while we waited for him on a highway. His behavior showed that he thought he, as the seller, had some kind of privilege over us,  the buyers. He didn’t let us take the car to a garage and said he didn’t have time and had to be somewhere. Earlier, he had changed the time to meet us many times. His friend had to go there and there, and so on. He came to meet us with four people in the car, who only got down when we started checking the car. Perhaps they didn’t even know that their friend was meeting prospective buyers.

Clearly, he was just hanging out with his friends, but he didn’t have the time to let us get the car checked by a mechanic, though we said we would only decide after getting it checked.

The car drove well. The taillight was broken, but he had told us about it. He wanted us to get it fixed. The car was dirty, and there were scratches on the interior.

We weren’t impressed or happy.

Two days passed, and we kept looking at other cars. We were still planning to buy an old car, most probably his, because the car was good. A couple of days later, he said that he had another offer, which he had mentioned earlier also. He had an offer from a guy who was taking it on loan. He was checking with us before giving it to him because we would do a direct payment, not a loan, which needed more documents and stuff. We quoted a price of 6.5; he had quoted 7.8.

He also told me that he was selling the car because his sister was getting married and he had to arrange for the wedding party, and that is why he was selling the car.  I sympathized with him. He seemed like a genuine guy, but he definitely didn’t know how to bargain.

When he should have said that the car dealers were offering 6.9, I believed him. But when I met him, I understood that he wasn’t the kind of person who would mind giving his car to a dealer for the right amount of money. His aim was to get more than 6.9, at least 7.15.

He could have given the car to the dealers. As per him, they were giving him more than us, and the job would be done quickly. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he wanted to bargain with us and came down to seven. He was still telling us that he had another offer for 7.15—the exact price he had wanted—but it would involve a loan.

Something wasn’t right. How was he getting the exact price he wanted?

He said he would give it to someone else if we didn’t finalize. I bargained for 6.9, and he said no. Later on, he messaged that his car is nice and we will miss it for 10k. That we shouldn’t go to a dealer, for one of his friends had a bad experience with a dealer.

I was already tired of his friends and their nonsense.

We were panicking now. We would miss the only car we had liked. There were not many good used cars listed online. Everything was above seven, needed proper investigation, and would take weeks, if we liked a car at all.

Another car we liked was manual. There were less listings for automatic cars. Like one-fourth of the total cars listed were automatic.

The owner of the manual car was busy and couldn’t give us a test drive. By the time he wanted us to give a test drive, we were sure we didn’t want a manual car.

That is when we decided to look at new car prices again. We didn’t like any used car, and we hated the attitude of the owners. They behaved as if they owned us, too. When we looked at new car prices on various websites, including the official Maruti Suzuki website, and talked to a few people, we understood that the ex-showroom price of a new car was less than what a lot of people were asking for their old vehicles.

Sagar and I were shocked. The on-road price of a new Swift was coming to 893,000. Only 1.5 lac higher than the old car.

After a few phone calls to new car dealerships, we understood that car prices are fixed. So for any particular model, almost all showrooms, both individual and chains like Mandovi, Pratham, Kataria, Bimal, RNS, Kalyani Motors—all will have the same price list. They would all show you the same paper filled with numbers as tiny as ants. The numbers are almost unreadable, so the potential buyer can’t see the details and agrees to whatever price is told to them.

They all quoted the ex-showroom price as 7.25. Add to it: 14 percent road tax, registration charges 1811, Zoom tag, extended warranty until five years or 100,000 km, insurance for a year, basic accessories for 10k, and a few other basic things. The price goes up from 7.25 to 8.93. When we called some of them back and asked them to give us a discount and tell us their best price, they said the consumer offer was INR 10,000, and they couldn’t give anything above that.

It was clear. Prices are standard. Offers are standard, too, though not for all cars. If we were choosing, let us say a Baleno or Celerio, the offers might have been different. The offers depend on the demand for the car, if a new model is coming out, whether there are any other discounts, the depreciation on the car, and so on. But Swift didn’t have many offers and discounts. It is always in high demand.

The next day was 26 January, and the D-Day. We arranged a test drive with Pratham Motors Bellandur. The person coordinating with us and the agent who had come to show us the car had a miscommunication (or perhaps it was their regular communication). We went to Bellandur, though we only had to go to HSR. They would have even come to us for a test drive if we had spoken to the office of Mandovi in HSR. So don’t do what we did. Don’t call the call centre. Because they would assign a person who wouldn’t let you go to someone else, and you would be dependent on his schedule.

We drove from Bellandur to HSR. The offer was for INR 10,000.

They wanted us to book the car right away. We wanted the car as soon as possible. They promised us a short time period of fifteen to forty days to get the car.

Some customer care and agents were lying that there was no waiting and we could get the car in two days. Others gave a laid-back estimate of more than a month. Pratham Motors said they could get the car within fifteen to twenty-five days.

No exact date was promised. We might get the car as late as February 25. That wasn’t going to work for us. So we kept looking and talking to people. If the car is in stock, you can get it immediately. And some cars are always in stock. Maybe not the color you want, and then you will have to book and wait.

We called many people, but no one promised a quick delivery or an acceptable timeline. It was January 26, and many dealerships were shut that day.

The next day, I searched for more dealership numbers on Justdial. Some big car dealerships are: Pratham, Kalyani, Mandovi, Bimal, at least in Karnataka. Not every car showroom has every car brand dealership. At the time of my research, there were 61 authorized Maruti Suzuki car dealers in Bangalore.

Authorized car dealers have the authority to sell vehicles for that company. Any brand website will list its authorized car dealers.

I didn’t check Maruti Suzuki’s website. I was still learning to do all this. I went to JustDial and looked for Maruti authorised dealers in Bangalore. Some numbers were correct, and some weren’t. Then I went to the website of the Mandovi dealership and called every location.

I called Kataria Automobiles from JustDial, and they told me they could get the blue color by February 10 for sure. But red? No, that would be dispatched next month and could only be received by the end of the month.

How do the dispatches work? So every fifteen days, there is one dispatch from Maruti. The cars are either shipped in trucks or by train. Trucks reach earlier than trains. This is what the Kataria guy told me, and I thank him for that. His dispatch was scheduled on the 30th, and there were already two red cars on that list. We wouldn’t make it in this dispatch.

I continued calling. I called the Mandovi Cox Town. I was speaking to someone called Suresh who definitely seemed to be in authority. He told me the pricing and everything, and that he could get me the red car by 12 February for sure. His dispatch was on the 29th, and he would add us to the dispatch. The cars would come to him by 7 or 8 February. Then we will make the final payment, he will start the registration process, and we will get the vehicle in two to three days.

“You will definitely have the car by 12 February.”

Voila! After a couple of phone calls to understand other basic things, we paid INR 5000 to the dealer and booked our SWIFT. Car bookings can be done online by paying a deposit. You will receive the invoice. Maruti even sent us a notification, welcoming us to their family.

Make sure you ask for the invoice and get the delivery dates written in the email. Not that you can do much if they can’t deliver the vehicle within the promised time frame. Don’t commit to insurance, extended warranty, or basic accessories. You can buy these things from outside, customized as per your choice, except for the warranty.

You would need an address proof so that your car is registered in a certain RTO.

About insurance and extended warranty.

As per government rules, you can’t have comprehensive insurance for a new car for more than one year. You can have a third party for two years and comprehensive for  one year. Compare insurance policies on PolicyBazaar and customise a policy as per your preferences.

Share the insurance agent quote with the dealership. Maybe they will match it. Then you can take the car for service to the dealership anywhere in India and get your car serviced in a cashless manner.

Warranty is required. The insurance doesn’t cover the engine, gear box, etc after the basic two-year warranty ends. By paying INR 10k, we could get the warranty extended to five years for the important basic things.

Accessories can be taken from anywhere. Once you have the car, compare prices, and go crazy.

What else?

Zoom tag is mandatory. Drive safe. And buying the car is the first step to independence. We love road trips and are super excited to travel and live around India with our Swift, which I am planning to decorate and customize the way I like. With a money plant tied to its window and colourful cushions sprawled on its seat. With the stereo on high, and our spirits in the air, flying with the car.

Our stuff would be in the trunk of our car, and we would be on the go.

Those journeys by road to Goa, Northeast, and Himachal are not far now.

Please note:My experience is limited to Swift and Bangalore. Please change the parameters appropriately as and when these variables change for you. This information is as of January 2021.

February 17

So everything has changed since the last time. I had told you that the booking was done and that we will receive the car on February 12. We were chilling, of course. But February 10 came, and our dealer hadn’t messaged or called us. At 10 pm he told us that he didn’t get the car. The car had not been dispatched. Why? “Because Maruti has not dispatched any vehicles since January. Everything is pending.”

“And Maruti is saying that they won’t do any of the scheduled dispatches.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?”

He said he would get the car this day and that day, and how could he have informed us without proper information on the car?

“You know that we are only in Bangalore to receive the car. We have moved out of our apartment and are in a guesthouse now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Of course, we told you many times.”

Sagar had suggested going to his showroom to book the car. He had said his showroom closes at five, which is too soon for any showroom. I realized he had just been dissuading us from visiting and just wanted to get the booking done. Then he could deliver whenever he liked. Everyone’s cars get delayed. What is the big deal?

Some reviews of Mandovi Motors that I should have read earlier.

So we yelled at him, and by we, I mean I, not my husband. We asked our 5k to be refunded. He had asked us to pay 11k as a deposit, but we had given five, saying that every dealership took 5.

We called more dealers and evaluated more cars.

Maruti Suzuki Swift has a rating of 3, on NCAP standards. That means it isn’t a very safe car when it comes to road accidents. Dual air bags are standard for all cars these days. Why not 6 airbags? Because the Indian legal system hasn’t mandated six airbags. They should. The car costs would go up. But instead of the accessories, I would suggest people go for that increase in price and be safe.

Apart from the rating and safety, you will see that in an accident Swift gets crushed badly. Its chassis, bonnet, and material aren’t that strong. It’s a hatchback, and not the safest one.

All right. So we got more time to reconsider our decision. Now we were also analyzing Nexon, Polo, and Brezza.

We took test drives of the Nexon. It is a good car. The test drive was good. They have LXI, ZXI, VXI, and ZXI+ models. Automatic was our first choice. But the waiting period was two to three months. Still no guarantee of the delivery time. Nexon has an NCAP rating of 5. Also, Tata is not well known in terms of the service and availability of service, and their network throughout India. You don’t want to go to a big city or drive 100 kms every time you need your car serviced.

The sunroof was a big hit with us. But you can’t buy a car for the sunroof.

So we left it at that.

Now we evaluated Brezza, another Maruti model, 4 on NCAP. It’s a compact SUV, much sturdier than the Swift. So safety-wise, it won us. Then we took a test drive. We liked it. The basic VXI model has a lot of features, enough to keep us engaged. It has enough boot space. Much more than swift. Ground clearing is higher, too. On Indian roads, you have to think of the bumpers and stones and speed breakers. There is cruise mode. Power windows, central locking, and all.

The engine transmission was torque-based, so you don’t drive on top of manual. Multiple colors are available. We were getting ZXI+, but that was not value for money. You mostly get cosmetic features on top of VXI (including some important ones, such as infotainment centre, reverse camera, and handset).  Other additional features were not needed, and you can always get stuff retrofit and pay less.

Don’t tell the dealers you won’t take insurance from them. Don’t upset them; engage them. We asked ours to match Kotak’s insurance. Don’t choose HDFC. They are unreliable, as a company and a bank. Their systems are old and archaic. They don’t care and have many hidden clauses.

I learned a lot from our car-buying experience. People can lie, and professionalism is cheaper than peanuts.

I have written this whole experience because when we were buying our car, I didn’t find any detailed experience of a buyer online.

Now we gave up on trying to get the car immediately. We booked a rental from Revv and paid a one-month rent. You need an address proof and have to pay the full rent, insurance, maintenance fee, and a refundable deposit of INR 5000. Book a week in advance, and you will definitely get the vehicle at your required time and address, which needs to be a rented home and not a guest house or anything. We tried.

Now we were looking for vehicles with a waiting period of 15 to 45 days, a standard for Maruti.

Here are some of my experiences with car dealers:

Kalyani Motors—Many offices. Call centre connect. A person will call back. Bad salesmen. Ignore.

Suraksha—Neutral. Salesmen didn’t know how to talk and spoke only the local language.

Mandovi—Bad experience. I have linked the reviews above. Don’t go with them. Cox Town Office was the worst.

Pratham—Experience has been okay. They didn’t want to explain much and wanted us to do the booking. Because we had spoken on the phone, the dealer thought we would step into his showroom and book the car. So he didn’t explain the brochure or the various features. He made small talk and sat with his hands folded on the table. When I asked him for pricing and everything, he said that why would we discuss again as had spoken over the phone. Weird, lousy, and lazy. His junior was no different. Then came the accessory guy who explained us most things. He sounded promising. They showed us a car with accessories, so we understood how a new car looks and how it is after fixing everything. And then he asked us if we knew about engine power regeneration and all, and I said no. We took a test drive and asked them to explain everything to us.

We negotiated the prices of accessories. We had checked with many dealers, so we knew how to negotiate. We reduced the price from INR 52300 to 45k.

We are getting roof painting, a car stereo system a reverse camera, hand rest, and mud flaps. They are giving us basic accessories for 11k, which we aren’t taking. Ask for a discount; it changes month to month. Road tax should be 14.5 percent. For cars above 10 lacs, the road tax would be 18.5 in total. So that is why getting a VXI car is better even on tax terms.

Make sure you don’t sound urgent to the dealer. Even if you have taken one test drive, but are inclining towards a dealer, take another test drive from them. And don’t sound convinced about the car. Let them tell it to you. Take a few days to decide on the car. And then after the test drive, compare and book. Also, negotiate for the accessories beforehand so that you book with the right dealer, the one who gives you good pricing.

Varun—Not great. Unprofessional experience.

RNS Motors—Not great. Unprofessional experience.

Everyone will tell you that the waiting period is this and that, and they will try to get the car for you on a priority basis. Don’t believe them.

Explain your timelines and get the delivery date in writing. Check the refund process.

Understand the dispatch timings of the manufacturer from various dealers. Try to know from where and through which transport the car is coming. Tell them to inform you if there is a discrepancy in anything discussed. How much time would it take after the dispatch, ask that. Tell about the pre-inspection. Like you have read my blog, there are many video channels like v3 cars—my favorite, and more that you should watch and make yourself aware of.

So this is the deal on February 17. Rest, I will tell you when I have received the car.

Update: We got the car. Our Brezza has been with us for five years now, and it is a perfect car. We turned its boot and backseat into our luggage storage. And both of us drive it, though, Sagar has driven it much more than me. It gives us good mileage, works well on mountains, and we are totally proud of it. Brezza is a good car, and we, who were on a continuous road trip for five years with all our things in our Brezza, approve of it.

Go for it. Good luck 🙂

MY FIRST BOOK

Journeys Beyond and Within...

IS HERE!

In my vivid narrative style (that readers love, ahem), I have told my most incredible adventures, including a nine-month solo trip to South America. In the candid book, the scoldings I got from home for not settling down and the fears and obstacles I faced, along with my career experiments, are laid bare. Witty and introspective, the memoir will make you laugh and inspire you to travel, rediscover home, and leap over the boundaries.

Sikkim Express: "Simple, free-flowing, but immensely evocative."

The Telegraph Online: "An introspective as well as an adventurous read."

Grab your copy now!

Amazon IndiaAmazon USAAmazon UKAmazon CanadaAmazon AustraliaAmazon Singapore

The memoir is available globally. Search for the title on your country's Amazon.

Or, read a chapter first. Claim your completely free First Chapter here.

Want similar inspiration and ideas in your inbox? Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, Looking Inwards.