Vehicle for the trip

Hi Guys,

Here comes the most important part in the planning. The best vehicle. Its got to be an SUV I guess.. what say?

Now we have quite a few options for SUVs in India. We have Ford Endeavour, Honda CRV, Suzuki Grand Vitara and Hyundai Terracan among the high end ones. Then there is the more "affordable" range of Tata Safari, Mahindra Scorpio and Ford Fusion, these are all around 10 lakhs mark. If we compare feature wise Tata Safari is on the highest end, price wise too. So Tata has come up with almost similar tech specs in Sumo Grande, (it looks cute... for an SUV) which is priced more aggressively and has lesser jazzy features like LCD screen etc.

There are some others which can fit the bill like Toyota Innova, Indigo Marina which can be considered, but am not, just for lack of sheer power. This trip could be fun to enjoy the raw power of the vehicle I choose.

So the choice has boiled down to picking one out of Safari, Sumo Grande, Scorpio and Fusion. Fusion looks good and is priced very aggressively but its not something I would like to pick for 2 reasons, one its power which is barely 100PS in the petrol version(diesel is a meagre 68) and two it is from Ford which from my US experience doesn't build cars that one can "enjoy", its more for "use". This trip has enjoyment as priority so Fusion is out. Sumo Grande I can buy a new one, but it does not come in Petrol variant and diesel doesn't make a lot of sense for my 10-15 km per day city driving, so that drops down the list a bit.

Okay, just checked petrol will be very expensive :-|. So for the trip it has to be a diesel car. Can I keep the diesel car after the trip .. may be .. may be not? So I have to buy something second hand, that I can sell of without loosing a lot of money in a month or so. So the Sumo Grande, the cutie, is out. Its too new and may not be available in second hand, even if it is available it would be huge loss in buying and selling.

So my choices are down to either a Safari or a Scorpio. The usual range that I look for in a second hand car is around 12k-15k per year and 2-3 years old. According to www.carwale.com, Safari should cost around Rs.6,36,500 and Scorpio Rs.7.34 for Aug 2005. The average is better by a couple of kms on highway in Scorpio as per net research. Given the price advantage of 1 lakh and my wife likes the look of Safari, I guess it will be a safari. P.S. The pricess are for 30k driven Dicor EX and Slx models respectively, which are second from top.

So my choice of vehicle is Tata Safari which should cost around 6.5L in August. thats AS OF NOW :-).

Cheers!

Jitendra