Tata Tiago diesel long term review: Introduction

When I first went to the Tata showroom to pick up the Tiago long termer, I secretly wished that we had the blue colour as it looks brilliant on the brochure. But as fate would have it, I was pointed towards the car you see on this page.

First impression? The Tiago in this colour blends in well with the other vehicles on the road and not many give it a second glance. I personally feel that the Tiago is one of the best looking hatchbacks in its segment. The mix and match of design cues from Hyundai as well as Ford have worked for this car. Similarly while few people in the office pointed out how the lower half of the dashboard feels a bit cheap compared to the upper one, I have had no problems. After all, how many times are you going to be touching those surfaces? I'm also enjoying the Tiago's fantastic 8-speaker Harman music system.

One thing does bug me though - when you mute the audio, the system doesn't pause the song. It sounds trivial but is quite an irritant, especially if you're jammed in traffic and it happens to be a song from your top 10 playlist. Another issue is that even at moderate volume levels, the rear parcel tray as well as the door pads start to rattle as does the inside rear-view mirror. Not a good sign considering build quality has always been a Tata weakness.

Coming from my beloved Celerio long term diesel, the Tata indeed feels like a big improvement. In fact, the one reason I wasn't allowed to write the Celerio-Tiago comparo was because of the assumption that I will be too biased towards the former. While I hate to admit it, first impression of the Tiago portrays it as a much better car overall. The engine is far more refined and feels impressively strong for such a small mill, climbing inclines in second gear without needing any clutch slip.

I like the way Tata have tuned the Eco mode in the Tiago. It doesn't feel like there is much of a shortage of power or that one has to drop gears to overtake. It feels close to the City mode and the mode seems to perform much better than in the Zest we drove last month for our Eco mode feature.

Tata service does not have a good reputation, something reinforced by our experience with our previous Zest and current Nano long termers. It is important for Tata to rectify that, after all, this is its new bread and butter model and the customer experience has to be good. As I write this, the Tiago has just crossed the 1,200km mark, time for its first service then!

Odo reading: 1,223km, date acquired: May 2016