The search and the final decision.

After 7 years of latent intentions and 4 months of serious thinking,
I finally bought my first car - A Suzuki Baleno. However, the
excitement cannot be compared to the time 10 years ago when I
bought my first motorcycle.

Our first car came in 1985, a shiny new chocolate brown Maruti
Suzuki 800 for the princely sum of Rs.59000/- (less than 1400$
at today's exchange rate). It served us well for around 20 years
before we finally decided to sell it off in Nov'2004. Fetched us 40K,
which is an incredibly good resale value. Ofcourse, the car was still
in great working condition, with only 52000kms clocked and the
paint still as good as new. Lot of care had gone into its maintenance,
mainly periodic washing and waxing, and this was reflected in the
resale price. The buyer was pretty impressed with the dent/scratch
- free exteriors and mainly the fully Japanese engine under the hood.
I would have liked to hold on to it for many more years, but my wife
would have none of it. So finally had to let go, with a heavy heart.
Occasionally, I see it zipping around in Chennai and a talk with the
new owner revealed that he was quite happy with it.

Along the way, in 1999, we bought our 2nd car for my sister's use -
again a Maruti800, but fitted with an aircon. After 14 years, the
price was now Rs.2,40,000/- (approx 5400$), a 3-fold increase in
price with a proportionate decrease in quality. Almost 95% of the car
(everything except the gearbox) was now being manufactured in
India and the deterioration in quality was quite glaring.

Anyway, having sold the car, the focus was now on acquiring a new
one as replacement. In 1985, there were only 2 other makes of cars
in the market, apart from Maruti-Suzuki. Both being vintage quality
cars with ancient technology from Fiat and Hindustan motors.
So, it was a no-brainer when it came to choosing Suzuki.
And to make things easier, Suzuki had only one model, the Maruti800.

But the car market in 2005 was a different ballgame altogether.
Now, there were more than 1o car manufacturers, each having cars in
different segments (compact, sedan, MUV, SUV etc) and each segment
having different variants to choose from. Having had a long and fairly
good experience with Maruti-Suzuki, I decided to stick with Maruti again.
Living in the city with its crawling traffic, a Maruti800 would have been
the ideal choice, low price combined with the best fuel economy of all
cars in India (maybe even the world). However, my wife would have
none of it. She wanted a change from the Maruti800. We finally decided
on the WagonR - a not-so-good looking car, resembling a loaf of bread -
but with the new tall-boy design which is pretty good on ergonomics.

We had almost bought it when I happened to test drive the Baleno
(a sedan from Suzuki, 1600cc, 94 bhp, 175 kms top speed) and was
hooked. The aircon in the Baleno is acknowledged to be the best
among all cars in India and rated even better than the one in the
Benz S-class (a car that costs 10 times more than the Baleno).

What followed was an intense fight between the mind and the heart,
between logic and crush. The 'car'dinal rule of city living is "The bigger
the city, the smaller your car should be". The Baleno, though classy
and powerful is not really a good bet for an Indian city. Being big, it is
difficult to zip in and out of traffic, needs more parking space, delivers
lesser kms per litre of petrol and so on. To cut a long story short, the
heart won and we decided to buy the Baleno and selected a shiny
black car. If looks could kill, this car would be hanged for multiple
murder. Sexy looks, yet a robust exterior, fancy stuff inside, 94 horses
waiting under the hood for my command and an aircon that makes
mincemeat of even hot Chennai weather.

I was a little worried about the mileage that it would deliver per litre
of petrol. But some quick calculations revealed that it gave atleast
12km to the litre (city driving with a/c) and 16kmpl (highways with
a/c). Not bad for a 1600cc car when smaller 1100cc cars like the
Santro give the same. And when compared to cars in its category,
the mileage can only be said to be awesome. The Accent-1500cc
& Corsa-1300cc return 10kmpl, the Getz-1300cc gives around
11kmpl and the Optra-1600cc gives a measly 8kmpl.

So, all-in-all a pretty good car.