I can confidently say this is one of those few TATA cars that is very reliable, robust and can be driven in varied Indian road conditions without any headaches or hassles
Bhpian Paulshekdex recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
Likes
- Good and premium looking interiors
- Large and airy cabin even being a micro SUV
- Good road presence
- Awesome ground clearence
- Decent enough mileage
- Easy to drive
- Robust build quality
Dislikes
- Driver visibility issue due to A pillar
- Questionable fit and finish
- Not so smooth gear shift
- Sub par engine
- Poor throw of OEM headlight
I will discuss all these points in this long term ownership review, but this being my first post in Team BHP let me start quickly by introducing myself and my car. I’m Abhishek from the historic and vibrant city of Kolkata, currently residing in Pune. I was always enthusiastic about cars but never owned one. In the year 2021, I have saved enough in order to afford my first car and so I started researching the market.
Cars Considered and Purchase Decision
Being my first car I only had few basic criteria’s that I wanted in my car:
- It should be reliable as I intended to undertake some long drives across India
- It should be very safe. India having some of the most unsafe roads I think safety should be everyones priority.
- Didn’t care much about features (I still don’t )
- Price should be within 7-8 lakhs max
Anyways, I have narrowed my search to 3 cars – Tata Tiago, Tata Altroz & Maruti Ignis. I took test drive of Maruti Ignis in Kolkata, and I can say I was pleasantly surprised with the smoothness of the engine and smooth shifting gearbox. It was a lovely car to drive. However, the only issue I had with Maruti cars at that time was it’s very questionable built quality (something which Maruti is improving a lot in recent times). So even though I liked the car, I ended up rejecting it.
Then I went to the next obvious manufacturer i.e. TATA. I went to Dhulichand Motors showroom near Ruby hospital. In this showroom both the Altroz and Tiago was parked side by side. Just by seeing the size of the Tiago my father and wife rejected it as way too small (typical Indian mentality I guess ), but anyways I was way more inclined towards Altroz as it met all my criteria.
Now here comes the twist. The sales person there said instead of going for Altroz you can also try the Tata Punch which was just released 1.5 months back. And then he showed me a car that just arrived in the showroom the same day. Fact is I didn’t like the look of Punch in the beginning as Altroz very well grew on me. But my wife and my father totally fell for the tall boy looks, high ground clearance and SUVish stance. Well after a debate with them, I finally agreed for a test drive and booked the car on the same day as driving and engine wise Altroz and Punch felt very similar. I booked the Adventure model MT costing me 7 lakhs 15 thousand on road Kolkata.
Fast forward to present day, I have covered 46,000 KMs in the car. I have travelled to the below states and still counting. In one word the experience is AWESOME till date.
States Travelled:
West Bengal
Jharkhand
Bihar
Uttar pradesh
Rajasthan
Madhya pradesh
Maharashtra
Punjab
Jammu & Kashmir
to Ladakh
Living With The Tata Punch
Now let’s talk about the daily experience I have with this car. On weekdays I drive this car on traffic packed city roads of Pune around 50KM daily. On weekends it’s a highway car for some long distance trips (not every weekend though). On city roads drive is very smooth in bumper to bumper traffic, have a feather light clutch, but in morning after cold start the gear shifts are very rough (especially 1st to 2nd and slotting back to 1st) at-least for first 5-10 shifts. Once the engine oil and gear oil gains some temperature the shifts starts becoming smoother. Punch has got very tight turning radius, so making a U-turn is very easy. However, the reverse gear is not always eager to engage, at times it takes a couple of attempts to slot reverse successfully. The clutch is feather light but it has a long travel and it needs getting some used to at the beginning.
However, the car’s high up seating position and good ground clearance (187mm) makes it a great driver in varied Indian roads. On the highways and expressways is where I start feeling that a little more power from the engine would have made it great at doing quick overtakes. The 1.2 litre NA Revotron engine is ok but definitely not the sportiest out there. I have kind of made my peace with it for now (anyways with more and more traffic speed cams in highways, speeding too much attracts lots of challans). While driving the ghats and mountains you can comfortably cruise this car on 2nd and 3rd gears without any hassles. In my Leh Ladakh trip (which I will post in few days) I rarely had to use the 1st gear apart from when starting from stand still.
Fit and finish of the car is definitely a problem as panel gaps, rattling sounds are a daily affair. But here’s the thing, this car has a really solid build. I had quite a few mishaps with this car, in one instance for eg. a bike rear ended my car, but it left a very small bent in the plastic panel and that’s it. This peace of mind with Tata Punch goes a long way. Besides, Tata’s service is surprisingly very affordable and I never had any of my service costing more than Rs 8k. Mileage wise it gives a decent mileage of around 11-12 kmpl in city and 19-20 kmpl in highways. People who drives this car slowly in low revs would probably be able to extract lot more mileage (as I don’t drive it very slow).
Overall I’m about to complete 50k KM in few months time and I can confidently say this is one of those few TATA cars that is very reliable, robust and can be driven in varied Indian road conditions without any headaches or hassles. This is by far one of the best FIRST CAR you can buy for yourself.
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