People like to have a life complete with everything they wish for in it. Do not leave yourself wanting in your car or you will be left wanting in your life.
The Indian automobile market is booming. Before the launch of a model is followed up another manufacturer announces that it is launching a new car. Or better still, a sports car manufacturer decides to put off Mr. Jairam Ramesh and announce that it is going to bring an entire range of sports cars onto our shores. Mainstream manufacturers like Renault are in for a share of our market, and a lot others like Peugeot are eyeing a share. All this is going to expand the number of models available by a considerable margin. Not to be forgotten also is the fact that a new model of car is flavored with a list variants, the new Verna has 10 variants!! That makes it extremely tricky for buyers to pick a variant of a car.
When people think of buying a car, they can think of a choosing a variant on the lines of value for money or on the lines of what they need or want in the car. The value for money part is fine, buying a diesel variant for tootling around in the city makes perfect sense. Buying the base model of a car for your driver to transport your family around is fine. But, which model should a person choose if he or she wants to drive it personally? The answer to that depends on the buyer in question.
Let me put the whole situation in context of a car. The Maruti Suzuki Swift petrol for example has three variants, Lxi, Vxi, and Zxi. Buying the Lxi makes sense if a driver is going to be chauffeuring the kids to school and back, but other than that it doesn’t make much sense. As for driving it yourself, it is a pathetic choice because at some point of time the owner will want to put the window down and realize that there are no power windows. Buying a brand new car in this day and age and having to roll the windows down is a seriously depressing idea. And God forbid the owner gets behind the wheel of the car. The whole dashboard is splattered with bits of black plastic which blocks out areas where there would have been a fog lamp switch or a defogger switch, or the switches for rear windshield washer and wiper. All this will make the owner feel depressed and think, what if a little more money was spent on buying a variant that had all the features and buttons that the car was designed with in the first place. As the owner drives around his/her thought process would constantly revolve around what it would feel like to have a car that was complete in everyway, just as we imagine our lives.
Then comes the Vxi owner and all he has to feel good about is power windows, couple of headrests on the backseat and the fog lamp switch on the dashboard. He still has some blacked out patches on the dashboard. Also, the air conditioning controls seem to have been an after thought by Maruti as the climate control unit was ripped out. Still, the owner thinks it could be worse, he could have been driving the Lxi. Just then a Swift Zxi overtakes the Vxi and the driver of the Vxi notices the lines on the rear windshield of the Zxi and realizes that he does not have those lines on rear window. A memory of the test drive in the Zxi plays a mental slideshow of a Swift dashboard complete with all the buttons and no blacked out patches are present. Even the HVAC controls look and feel decent. The Vxi owner wishes for a sleek looking integrated stereo with steering mounted audio controls and the ability to clean the rear windscreen at the touch of a button so that its possible to see out of the dirty window.
The Zxi owner on the other hand feels life is complete, at least in the car, and drives along feeling good about life as he overtakes a Swift Vxi and realizes his car is better equipped and crucially safer with airbags in the dashboard. Finally, both cars pull up at the lights and the shiny alloy wheels on the Zxi catch the attention of the Vxi driver. At this point the Vxi driver feels all is lost and wishes he was in the Zxi. The biggest mistake a person can make in the world of automobiles is buying the wrong car. Try not to drive a middle of the way car as it leaves you wanting for more in your drive and your life.
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