It’s a Caaaaar!!!!

Having never even heard of the car I entered the Nissan Showroom in Begumpet, Hyderabad with least of the expectations. I never even expected to be bowled over by this immaculate machine “The Nissan Sunny”.

My wife and I went on this searching spree to check which car would fit for our requirements.

• Good leg room (I am 6 feet 2 so I wanted a car which fits me along with my family)
• Good Engine
• Good Interiors
• Good mileage 🙂
• Within Budget

We went from showroom to showroom, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Renault, Maruti, Honda. Disappointed with almost all the options these showrooms had we were heading home. On the way back we see this Nissan showroom and I very casually said,

“Do you think we should go in? I don’t think it would have any car that I know of to meet our requirements.”

My wife being the persistent trier she always is, said “We anyways saw all the showrooms, why miss just this one. It would hardly take 10 minutes. Lets just go in and come.” I feel really happy that I have taken a decision to listen to her that day… 🙂 Not that I don’t otherwise, because I do and I always do… I know at least a few of my friends who are reading are thinking “Dude!!! As if you have a choice not to listen”. 🙂

But anyways, the moment we entered the showroom, I said to the sales person “I am looking for a car which has good leg space because… ” with a smile. That guy… he reacted as if he waiting for someone to ask this… He immediately said, “I will show you only such a car sir, please come in”.

He took us right to this Car, The Nissan Sunny. Even from it’s look from outside, it did not seem as if it would satisfy my requirement. But as I slid myself into the driver’s seat, I was shocked and pleasantly surprised. It had excellent leg space in the driver’s seat and I asked my wife to sit behind the drivers seat with my seat completely moved back. First words that came out from her mouth were, “WOW!!! This is too good Chaitanya, I am sure even you can sit comfortably in this seat with driver’s seat moved back completely.”

To my added surprise, it was true. 🙂 I was able to sit comfortably in the back seat. But you know our typical mentality… How come we never heard of such a nice car? How come no one talked about it? Is it a good car? May be it is too costly… May be it is way above our budget… It has automatic climate control, it has blowers at the back seat… it has excellently comfortable seats… it definitely have to be costly…

We walked with the sales person to get a quote for the car… and it surprised us again when he said, the diesel version XL would cost 9.95 Lakhs on road with Insurance and Life tax paid. Well it was not in our budget for sure but when a Honda Amaze with not as many features as the Sunny is costing around 9 Lakhs, 9.9 for a car which is this big and comfortable seemed a decent price. We walked out of the show room holding the pamphlet and that’s the first time I saw the tag line of Nissan Sunny…

“It’s not a car, its a caaaar!!!”.

With a smile on our face we walked out of the showroom.

Online reviews, comparison of cars “Honda Amaze Vs Nissan Sunny”, “Maruti Swift DZire Vs Nissan Sunny”, “Chevrolet Sail Vs Nissan Sunny” the search continued on and on for couple of weeks. With no inclination to buy a car which is close to 10 Lakhs, we threw the papers aside and thought, lets think of this a few months later.

Thanks to the Hyderabad heat, we changed our mind and said to ourselves, “lets go and check Honda Amaze once again and then decide which car to pick…” One fine evening we went to Honda showroom to inquire the details about Honda Amaze and with the attitude shown by the staff in the Honda showroom, and the way they replied back saying you have to wait for 9 Months to get this car, we decided against this car. We then went to the Nissan showroom near by “Lakshmi Nissan, Jublie Hills” and we were extremely pleased by the attitude of the staff. We decided to take a test drive of the Nissan Sunny dci XL model.

The drive seemed pretty smooth and comfortable and I was very happy with the pick up and ease of use of this car. The pick is not the best but common man, I would be driving in Hyderabad, so I was pretty convinced. The AC was excellent, and the automatic climate control showed its power. The audio system was decent and the though the gear seemed a little tight to move smoothly, it was pretty decent. The clutch was a little too quick to release but I thought it would be good as I get used to the car. Overall it was positive experience more so to do with the leg room and comfortable seats and decent looking interiors.

We went back almost convinced to go ahead with this car on that Saturday and yup we did that on the following Thursday. 🙂 We made a booking of our favorite color, the brick red and initiated the Car loan process only to pick up the car the following Wednesday (May 29th, 2013). 🙂

It is just over a week that I had this machine in my hand and I would say I am pretty satisfied with it. I still need to get used to car driving in India (specially handling clutch, gear, break and gear during steep roads) but as of now I am enjoying driving this Caaar!!! It so happened that my first bike that I got was with a tag line “It’s a BOY!!!”. Yeah, you guessed it right, it was The Bajaj Pulsar. And now my first car “It’s a CAAAAAAR!!!”. And I am loving it…

Yet to go on a long drive in our car but we are pretty excited about it…

Bottom Line:

If you are looking for a family car, with very spacious interiors, comfortable ride with decent to good mileage, with passion to go on long drives (but not adventurous though) then go for this car. IT IS A VERY GOOD VALUE FOR MONEY.

For people in Hyderabad, if you are looking for a Nissan Showroom and expecting to have a pleasant experience, make a note of this showroom Lakshmi Nissan, Jublie Hills, Near Peddamma Temple, Hyderabad.

I am adding the telephone number of the agent who helped us have a wonderful experience after taking permission from him to include his number.

Sales Person: Srinivas Chowdary (8096666562)

Signing Off,

Chaitanya.