Tata Storme vs Mahindra XUV5OO - Which One To Choose?

S Class · May 9, 2013

Raja said:

I actually support this. Why do people want to own gas guzzlers on fuel which is subsidized ? These SUVs are more of show-off trucks than actual utility perspective. I have till date not seen any T-Fort or Audi Q7 on bad roads, let alone off-road.
However, there is no hike in taxi UVs, which shows that the intention of Govt was good. [clap]

Simple solution is to buy CUVs, small, get UV like looks & lighter on pocket too. And ofcourse, those who really require SUV in reality due to their use, they will buy it in anycase. The drop in sales show how significant was the number of buyers buying SUVs for show-off purpose. Had their case been genuine, they should have bought it.
Eg. A guy who is in infrastructure business purchased Land Rover recently. This had more to do with his work profile rather than looks. For family use, he has Merc C Class & uses LR only for work.

raj_5004 · May 9, 2013

S Class said:

SUVs are not really gas guzzlers, unless we are talking about the 4.2 V10 Audi Q5. In which case, I can bring the S500 into picture!

My XUV gives me 9 kmpl in the city. A friend's Cruze and another's Laura gives similar FE.

And when we are talking about subsidized fuels then, why target only SUVs? Why not the 150-200 bhp sedans which we have in that price range?

That has been your opinion since day one, I wont challenge that.

Bad roads always does not mean off road. Some buy SUVs because it can survive our pothole ridden roads with huge speed breakers much better than sedans. I am sure if our Govt. is willing to give us good roads, many more users will start buying sedans. So I would really request our Govt. to give us good roads first, and then apply various taxes on SUVs.

I feel the drop in sales is because many cannot afford it now. Some may genuinely want it, but if they cant afford it, they wont be able to buy it, irrespective of their needs.

manojodungat · May 9, 2013

Raja said:

Storme, even with less complexities[read lack of features] it does seem to have its share of niggles as I read on the internet posted by a real life storme owner. Some of the niggles he faced are related to rattles, door locks & electronics, suspension and power steering. Though the ride quality on good roads are stated to be good, but there exists significant body roll on bad roads. He even replaced the front passenger seat with the rear one to reduce bumpiness [roll]

and the reported FE is just 10km/L.

But the good part is that all those niggles were corrected at the A.S.S and found that T.A.S.S had better trained staff than his previous experience with Skoda. [clap]

Raja said:

Different but successful vehicles [based on market response] mentioned here are made for different purposes,IMHO.

Innova as a comfortable people mover,
Scorpio as a capable sprinter SUV and
XUV a more luxurious sprinter Cross-over

attract different categories of buyers. One need not bang their head much on the wall to know which vehicle listed above ,from the Taxi segment contribute much to their respective sales volumes.

I only wish I could list Storme in the second category and Aria alongside Innova as a people mover and alongside XUV as a cross-over.

A vehicle to fare on a long run[both for private use and Taxi], it has to prove its mettle on its reliability, its perceived reliability and along with the VFM factor compared to other options available in the segment.
IMO, both Innova and Scorpio have been tested to death over many years and henceforth may have gained the “trust” among people. Until a new player proves better, they will continue to do well.

Coming to XUV, it is still in the rigorous testing period, thus variations in sale. Lets give it a few more months to fight it out,IMO.

Raja · May 9, 2013

Bro nothing banging of head is going here . You posted your observations , and I posted mine . For you the scorpio is a capable sprinter SUV . For me too it is a capable SUV , for some its a capable taxi . Why are you taking it so personally ? Relax man .
Having said that I never found a xuv taxi and storme taxi so far .

TSIVipul · May 9, 2013

First of all I agree with Raj on the fuel guzzling point.
Modern SUVs are not lagging far behind our sedans like Cruze etc in terms of FE and hence calling SUVs alone as fuel guzzlers is not done. Many sedans are also fuel guzzlers(Go and drive a Cruze Auto). In fact any engine which has such high displacement(as normally SUVs have) will definitely consume marginally higher amount of fuel as compare to their low displacement counterparts.

On XUV point:
XUV is a vehicle which has already proven its mettle and that is the naked truth which we are free not to accept but we can't change it. It is reliable and has many stories where it has proved to be a reliable product. Nose dive in sales is with nearly every SUV and hence before drawing a conclusion let us first of all wait for a month or two before moving ahead with points like declining sales figures and their reasons.

manojodungat · May 9, 2013

Raja said:

OT
Buddy, why should I take anything personally ?
After all it is the same human beings like me and you, who own those Taxi cabs and travel in them too.In fact it is those businessmen who are much more concerned about the long term running/maintenance cost and reliability, while deciding on a car.

Raja · May 9, 2013

manojodungat said:

Of course they are human beings like you and me I dont deny the fact . The point here is not whether human or some other species are buying that . the point was which models are sold more, like you posted your observation of innova I posted my observation of Scorpio .

raj_5004 · May 17, 2013

Though nobody can deny that the XUV does have some niggles, it is the always "ready to help" attitude of M&M which comes as a relief to it's owners.

Gurrala74 · May 17, 2013

@Raj, more than how MnM attended to its customer(it is their duty when some body bought vehicle shedding some 12 to 14 lakhs) it scared me more how such things happen on a premium vehicle and strand you on the road(of-course this guy was lucky enough as his vehicle made to Goa). Now about the response of MnM, from 11th to till 13th almost it took 2 days time to rectify everything, is that so great. If I was in his place, I would have searched for a nearest MnM service(verna) and took my vehicle there and got the pads replaced in few hours and get back to the holiday travel which makes more sense than shooting out emails to few people and receiving 5 people attention for 2 days [:)]

raj_5004 · May 17, 2013

^^^

It has been discussed in length and breadth in this thread about how it is a company's "duty" to attend to it's customers when they face a problem. But come to the real world scenario and you will find that not many companies are actually pro-active in helping out their customers. So let's keep the right and wrong besides for a moment. We have a lot of customers suing the companies in consumer courts, dont we? Recently TATA was fined by the court for delivering a defective vehicle. Skoda has some court cases too. So, if every company were following their "duties", we will never hear about such stories, right?

If you read the post again, M&M did not take 3 days to solve the issue. The complaint was registered on 12th, which was a Sunday. Still he got concern calls from various people in M&M and his vehicle was attended to on the same day. He got the vehicle back on the following day which I feel is acceptable, more so because it was not a working day.

The point here is not what we would have done - maybe the owner did not want to risk driving a vehicle with a squeaking brake.

As I said before, there are 2 ways to judge this post -

1) XUV has niggles and is not a safe vehicle to take out for holidays, as you see it.

2) XUV may have niggles, but is well supported and handled by the company, as I and in this case, the owner sees it.

The following statement by the owner is the conclusion:

"Though I'm pretty mad because my brake pads were not attended to earlier, I am satisfied by the way M&M reacted to my situation and went about sorting it out in a systematic and professional manner. Kudos M&M for taking care of its customer and not making my Holiday a mess !!"

Of course, I would still suggest the not-so-accommodating people to buy the Innova instead!

Gurrala74 · May 17, 2013

@Raj

From the owners response posted here, I could read this

-10th (friday) evening he has faced the problem
- 11th (saturday) morning shooted out the mails
- 12th (sunday) morning received response calls, service people came at 4 pm
- 13th (monday) evening delivered the vehicle

Now you calculate the time your self from the above, if I was in his place since I have encountered the problem on Friday evening, I could have straight away reached MnM Verna on Saturday morning it self and get those brake pads replaced in few hours and continued my holiday instead of ruining Saturday, Sunday and Monday completely waiting for MnM.

I am not pointing out anything about MnM here instead pointing out towards that owner [:)]

raj_5004 · May 17, 2013

Gurrala74 said:

Sorry. I think its the hangover from my b'day!

As I mentioned, maybe the owner was not willing to risk driving a car with a squeaking brake for 50 kms.

navnit013 · May 18, 2013

@raj,

First thing, the disc pads wearing out at 8.5K kms is not a niggle. Its a failure. Niggles are acceptable but not failures.

Well done to Mahindra though.
But the person could have taken the car to nearest Mahindra dealer and got the job done faster (2 hrs max, it will take to replace disc pads).

Tornado · May 25, 2013

S Class said:

Yes, right you are .In pune especially area near the muncipal limits , whenever a traffic jam occurs , there is wide but bad side strips along the side of bituminous road , I often see Indica taxis prefer to go ahead on the bad road so as to bypass the bottle neck of the traffic jam but SUV s prefer to que up on main bituminous road.

@TSI , GOVT looks at sales figures , number of fuel guzzler SUV s is high as compared to fuel guzzler sedans.After all govt. has to see that whole auto industry doesn't get closed and locked.

why would bad mouthing affect the sales unless the owners of 3 to 4 times better selling XUV spread the news of niggles ?

There is no reason to expect new buyers to go for same vehicle which has been finally recalled after many trial and error based replacements of brakes.?

Exactly , it's this ' anxiety' which the M & M is not able to to remove from the mind of a customer inspite of the proactiveness.

S Class · May 26, 2013

Tornado said:

+1. I have even seen a SX4 take a bit off-road & avoid traffic queues when the road widening work at Nagar road was going on from Vimannagar towards Nagar road & I saw not 1 but atleast 4-5 UVs lined in the queue where they could have simply took the same path of SX4. What's more, I know atleast 3 people in our neighborhood who travel frequently on Pune-Mumbai Expressway using their T-Fort, Chevy Captiva & Santa Fe (this is now sold, replaced by Elantra).
If some guys here crib about roads, then why on earth one require UVs on expressways ?? This is just an excuse & please, we stay in India & not Afghanistan or Sudan [lol]

that we need UVs 24x7. There are many people in our society who own premium sedans & use it daily for intracity + intercity use without any hitch. Had roads been so bad as some say, people in Mumbai would have been driving tractors, let alone trucks (UVs). [lol]

Our roads are not good for Lambos or Ferraris, but give me Merc sedan or even BMW 3 series & I can take it to any part of the city with ease (just don't ask me to park it though, no parking space [anger]

).

When we did Pune-Goa in Merc E350 CDI, the FE was around 19 kmpl.
Issue is not just engine but tech which goes into it, & also the coef drag. The engine design itself is different where for UV, torque is priority at lower rpm & not bhp.

+1. No wonder then XUV dealers are offering Rexton for exchange of XUV at good rates.

Brake is such a important stuff. Brake prob can't be called niggle, it is major flaw. Infact, it was only due to these things, I had asked chauffeur not to exceed 90-100 kmph when I was in Nagpur early this year.

+1. This was the sole reason there is new Storme in my society purchased by a guy whose brother owns scorpio & planned to buy XUV, but whenever he used to take scorp for servicing, he used to find lot of new XUVs too, after which Storme was purchased.

Tata Storme vs Mahindra XUV5OO - Which One To Choose?

S Class

V10

raj_5004

V12

manojodungat

V10

Raja

V12

TSIVipul

V12

manojodungat

V10

Raja

V12

raj_5004

V12

Gurrala74

V12

raj_5004

V12

Gurrala74

V12

raj_5004

V12

navnit013

V10

Tornado

V10

S Class

V10