The new Tata Zest is claimed to be a fresh start for the carmaker. No longer satisfied in playing second (or third) fiddle to Maruti and Hyundai in the mass market, the Zest will lead the charge of a whole new Tata family. But is it any goodIJ Kushan Mitra finds out
let us start out with an honest assessment of what cars Tata Motors — not the Jaguar-land Rover division, but Tata Motors cars wearing the ‘Tata’ logo —produce. Think of word association here and the first adjective you would think of is ‘cheap’. And that is not just because of the Tata Nano, which is indeed a cheap car (not quite cheerful though), but over the years also the Indica and Indigo. Even the last generation, the Manza and the Vista were nice cars, but lacked a refined edge.
Which brings us to an obvious question: would you buy a Tata Motors car if you did not run a taxi serviceIJ The answer the buying public gave the company was: not really. None of Tata Motors cars have been the sales success that the boffins at Bombay House, Tata’s storied headquarters, thought they would be. They have reinvented the vehicles and put out some really good advertising over the years. But they have really not managed to get consumers’ hearts racing.
Over the past few years, though, the company’s design language has seen a change. You saw that with the Manza and Aria, which from the outside at least look fairly impressive. But still really could not change consumer impressions of the brand, you do not need the sales figures to tell you that cars have not rushed out of the showrooms, you hardly see any on the roads that is not wearing commercial number plates.
The new Tata Zest wants to be different, it wants to be a sales success. But will Tata succeed with this car where it has failed repeatedly in the pastIJ
First things first, it looks fabulous. Not just for a Tata car, where Tata’s head of design Pratap Bose has managed to retain the Tata family look in this compact sedan, but also in the segment itself. This reviewer is not very fond of the compact sedan segment so-called because they are all below four metres in length and thus qualify for an excise benefit. One can not only argue about the practicality of compact sedan over a hatchback, but also the looks. The Swift D’zire, Honda Amaze and Hyundai Xcent are all not lookers, which is odd because their hatchback counterparts are not ugly. In fact, the Swift is a positively good-looking and proportionate car; compact sedans all feel disproportionate.
The Zest qualifies as a decent looking car because it feels designed as a compact sedan from the ground up and not a plastic surgery job of adding a tiny boot to the car. Those cars genuinely look like they have had butt implants. This does not. So score one for exterior design. However, it is in the interiors that you really get a shock. Tata interiors felt woeful, the old Indica/Indigo seemed to have interiors from the 1980s. They looked tired, they looked cheap and the quality of plastics was woeful.
This does not — the interiors look modern, they look well screwed-in, everything is where it should be, the tactile feel of the plastic does not remind you of a cheap toy. The ConnectNext touch-screen colour infotainment system is class-leading (the touch-screen can act up), the seats feel positively nice, rear legroom is more than adequate. OK, so the roof-lining could feel a bit better, the reversing assist could be several notches less loud and a rear air-conditioning vent would have been nice, but it does feel like one is nit-picking. This is the first time that an affordable mass-market Tata car does not feel like a blast from the past.
So it looks good both inside and out, it is a sea change from Tata cars of the past. But it does not just have to be good looking, it has to be able to drive well. More than anything else, Tata Motors has always tried to sell its vehicles as youthful products, and going by their advertising, edgy even.
let’s get the praise out of the way, this car corners and handles well. There is no significant body roll, as some previous Tata cars suffered. While you ride extremely high, this car towers over almost every other sedan on the road, you can throw it into a corner if you want and come out the other side without feeling that the car tried to kill you. It is not the best handling car in the world or in its class, but those who have driven Indicas and Indigos of yore will appreciate this massive improvement.
Now for the problem, and the bit for that tarnishes the Zest experience — the engine. The car tested was the top of the line Tata Zest XT with the petrol Revotron engine. This engine produces 88.8 horsepower, it has ‘Eco’ and ‘Sport’ mode settings. like the car, this new engine is also a dramatic transformation for Tata, after all Tata petrol engine cars were horrible earlier. This engine is an improvement, but is nowhere near as good as the competition.
Forget the start-up noise, which is disconcerting enough to wonder which fuel drives the car, it is the complete and utter lack of low-range power that shocks you. Imagine a situation, you are on the highway driving at 50, maybe 55 km, an hour with the engine ticking over at 1,500 or so revolutions per minute on fifth gear. You see an opening in front and want to accelerate to the speed limit. You do not necessarily change down to fourth gear because you really don’t want to accelerate hard, so you squeeze the throttle a bit and imagine that the car will go faster. The Zest doesn’t.
To get any semblance of performance out of the car, you have to work the gearbox; hunting for the sweet spot, hoping that you never drop below 2,000 revolutions per minute. In normal city driving where you do not really want to use the gear lever like an egg-beater, this is irritating. Yes, the power delivery improves as engine speeds improve. But in start-stop city traffic, the Zest feels lost. And it is not as if the mileage is excellent as a result, in normal city driving, the Zest returned 10 km to a litre according to its own computer.
While it looks good and feels nice inside and despite the not-so-nice engine, which one hopes Tata Motors will work the rough edges off sooner rather than later, it is quite affordable. This fully-loaded XT model at `5.99 lakh ex-showroom Delhi is half a lakh cheaper than its nearest rivals, which do not have such good kit. But half a lakh over a five-year loan is just a thousand rupees a month, and the competition is tough, convincing buyers to buy this car instead of the Swift D’zire or Amaze is going to be an immense ask for Tata marketers.
The Zest might be a dramatic change for Tata Motors in terms of design and features, but like every car from Tata before it and possibly many more Tata cars to come, the Zest remains a price warrior. And in an era of equated monthly payments, that is not the best way to fight on the car battlefield.