Tata’s latest crossover, the Nexon is quite impressive. It won the Car of the Year at the 10th Times Auto Awards and our man Aniruddha (Anu), who was using this vehicle, seemed to like it quite a bit. All this you already know so I won’t bore you with why it won the awards or why Anu loved it. I’ll tell you why I’m happy to have received the keys to the Nexon. The past couple of weeks have been a dull and dreary mess. The skies never cleared and the rain never stopped. Not for more than a few minutes. With Pune’s municipal corporation being as efficient as they are, like everywhere else in the country, this meant waterlogged roads and potholes, where there were none.
The need of the hour was an SUV and an SUV is what the Nexon is. With its high ground clearance and supple ride quality, this Tata is proving itself to be one tough cookie as it battles one rainy challenge after another between home and work. Rains also, strangely, equate to extra traffic on the road. Here again, the Tata with its torquey motor is proving to be quite adept because I have to work less to keep ambling. Something Aniruddha had mentioned as well in the previous long term report that appeared in the June issue. It’s pretty decent on the efficiency front too and gives me about 18km to a litre, which means one and a half round trip because home to office is 6km.
There are a few niggling issues though. The key fob stopped working one day unexpectedly before deciding to start working again just as suddenly. The Bluetooth audio is taking a break and the fuel filler cap refused to shut until a petrol pump attendant fixed it out of the blue. Hopefully all this will be sorted once the vehicle gets serviced. But barring these trifles, life with the Nexon is no problem at all.