Verna CRDi at 98000kms..

Hyundai Verna CRDi

Booked 2 Vernas in Nov 2006.. Maroon and Passion Red.. Maroon one for our engg and passion red for myself..

At the time of Launch, Diesel verna was available in only 1 variant and that too basic one without Hieght Adjustable seat, narrow tyres and No ABS.. This was highly disappointing..

Got delivery of Maroon one on 7th jan 2007.. On paper Verna seemed very attractive with 110bhp CRDi engine.. We already had 3 CRDi cars before Verna (2 Accents and a Tucson).. And we were very sattisfied with those 3 so obviously we went for Verna without thinking twice.. Passion red Verna was scheduled to be delivered in 3rd week of Jan.. Till then I used Maroon one for atleast 1000kms.. To be frank I was highly disappointed with the car.. And I felt lucky that my car was readily not available.. Obviously i cancelled the booking of Passion red Verna and the booking amount was transferred to Service dept of Sharayu Hyundai for servicing of our other Hyundai cars..

Like our other cars, Verna too started its travel to all corners of Maharashtra since Day 1..

Looks: Looks are subjective.. Verna being well-known in market, need not discuss much in detail.. But I didn't like the rear part.. In interiors, dashboard too is quite plain-jane..

Comfort: Front seats are too low.. Highish steering wheel and dashboard gives you that SUNK feeling.. U take time getting used to this odd driving/ sitting position.. Rear seats hav decent leg-room and are reasonably comfortable..

Performance: 1.5 CRDi with 110 Bhp screams power.. What it fails to indicate though is the turbo lag.. There is a huge turbo lag till 1800 RPM.. U fully press the accelerator under 1500RPM wondering why the hell car is not picking speed and once the car is past 1800 RPM, the car suddenly take off with mind-blowing urgency.. 0-100 comes at appx 10 secs and Top-speed attained is 190kmph.. Fuel effciency achieved is 17 on highways and 12-14 in city with AC On full time.. One thing i noticed while accelerating the Verna is there is a considerable output of black smoke from exhaust.. This is applicable to all Vernas..

Ride and Handling: Tyres disappoint a lot in this department.. The 175/70/R14 tyres just arn't sufficient to handle the power of Verna.. 185/65/R14 tyres of SX are much much better.. With narrower tyres, car just feels as if it is floating in air without any contact with road.. Theres no feeling of safety what so ever.. Bcoz of these tyres, handling is very poor and u don't feel comfortable to push the car on the corners.. Ride is good with upto 3 seats occupied but gets a bit bumpy with full load.. Ride is good on bad roads too but u get a rattling feeling in steering wheel while on rough roads.. Steering too lacks feedback.. And this car is very risky to be driven at high speeds.. This reminds me of a tagline of some tyre, "Power is nothing without Control".

Maintainence: First 4 services are absolutely free which gets over at 20000kms.. After that u need to shell out appx Rs. 3000 per service.

Non-routine Repairs: At 34000 kms the Turbo started making whistling sound at above 2500Rpm. Checked with Sharayu Hyundai and got the Turbo replaced under warranty. Asked the price of Turbo out of curiousity and was surprised to know that it costs Rs. 65000! At 56000Kms, Front suspension job was done costing Rs. 14,000. At 76,000kms, Rear wheel bearings gave up and had to be replaced for Rs.8500. And in Mid Jan at 92000kms (just after completing 2 years and expiry of warranty), the engine started making strange noise.. Checked with Sharayu Hyundai, They said that theres a probaility of Timing Chain making noise. If that is the cause, it will cost Rs. 30000. Still if it makes noise, then engine head needs to be serviced which may cost 25000+.. Now this vague reply obviously irritated us.. Checked with Service Manager and he assured that they won't make us pay for anything which was alright. Finally the cause was HLs which work with timing chain. There was gap in the connecting rod and due to this timing chain was making noise. It costed Rs. 37000.

Now at 98000kms, Turbo has again started whistling.

Tyre life is 30000kms to the max.. Now the car is running on 3rd set and requiring new set of tyres immediately.

All in All, this is the best maintained and one-hand used car in our fleet driven very smoothly. And still it has costed a good amount of money to maintain.. All the money saved in fuel by buying a diesel car and more is spent in the maintainence. This car is not a pleasure to drive, not much comfortable and costly to maintain. I guess, this car is not as well-engineered as other Hyundai cars are..

Verna sold well only bcoz there wasn't any better alternative to Verna.. Now that Linea is here, it is a much better alternative to Verna.. So what if it is bit underpowered?

P.S: Hav only 3 pics of Verna as of now..