Today I got my new car delivered – a “New Warm Silver” colour Honda City ZX GXi. I have been planning for a new car to replace my Opel Corsa 1.4 GLS, for the last 12 months after its warranty (1-year base and 2 years extended warranty) expired, but the inertia of acting on it was too much for me to do anything. Personally, I am not a Car “Lover” – a car is more a utility to commute that’s about it for me.
Another reason for the wait was that my Opel Corsa was doing well. I had no complaints about the car, was extremely easy to drive and park in City conditions, the size was compact and absolutely no problems. The only minus was mileage, which in the four years I owned, I could never cross more than 7Kms per litre. For strange reasons, GM discontinued the car in India a year or so back and started pushing their “Chevy” brand of cars instead. This meant spares for Corsa became sparse (or at least that’s what the market was talking about) and the value for re-sale of the car diminished significantly. After taking a price quote from two used car dealers in Chennai including Sundaram Motors and Manipal, I sold it to a relative of a friend. Even then I could manage to get less than 1/4 (one-fourth) of what I paid for the car exactly 4 years back – lower than the allowed income tax depreciation :-(. If there is a moral to this story – then don’t think of Cars as investments anymore in India, second buy the popular moving brands and not a niche vehicle if you plan to resell them in a few years.
For the new Honda City – I went with a Loan from my favourite bank, the “Bank of India”. I managed to get the cheque within the same day, my company’s long-standing banking relationship with them certainly helped in faster processing). That’s what I call service. If you want to know why I didn’t go with any other bank, read my earlier post on Housing loans here.
Honda City ZX in India in 2007