A Review of Driving Tata Vista D90

In ancient times a man and his steed were inseparable; today the role of steed has been taken over by cars and bikes.  No wonder a car can evoke emotions that have very few parallels. Indeed for the upward mobile Indians today cars is as much a necessity as a home, and in a lot of cases people buy a car before buying a home. I have been driving for a long time now and have been fortunate to rent and drive some very good cars on my trips to US. But car driving in India is totally different as some of our roads are designed to test the next vehicle ISRO and NASA plan to send to Mars.

I received a brand new Tata Vista D90 as part of review program from Blogadda. When the car arrived at our place I thought the guy will ask me to fill a big form etc., but he just gave me the keys called his boss that he has delivered the car and left. So here I was with a brand new car trying to explore its features.

Looks: The first thing you notice on this car is that though it is an Indica it is not actually your earlier Indica. The difference starts from the liberal amount of chrome used in the grill, below the grill, in the fog lights, on the side panels and even on the door handles.  The headlights are triple barrel  giving  it a sleek look.  The car comes in two-tone colors with the aerodynamic roof coming in black  enhancing the sporty look of the  red Vista D90 I tested.

Drive: First day we just took the car around to nearby places and I posted some pictures on Facebook, immediately my friends started commenting on the cars looks. Next day I wanted to drive the car to a little longer distance and wanted to focus on drive, so I requested my friend and photographer Ganesan  to join me, he was kind enough to click pictures for me for the car. So any picture you don’t see water mark  are clicked by Ganesan.  We decided to drive to  Chilkur Balaji Temple  also known as Visa God temple, in the Vista D90 as part of the road is awesome toll road and after half the journey you get the typical winding rural roads of India. I must say Vista D90 handled both with equal ease and we did not feel any problem in overcoming the potholes as well as mini mountains in the name of speed breakers on the road to Chilkur Balaji Temple.

Front Cabin This is where Vista D90 surprised me the most, you are treated with space age steering column with audio controls, a touch screen multimedia system with GPS enabled navigation, Bluetooth sync with multiple phones, information how many more kilometers the car will go with the amount of diesel in tank, and ports to attach your USB drives to listen to music.  The side view mirrors can be adjusted internally from a know, all 4 power window automatic climate control, adjustable tilt steering, and adjustable seats with lumbar support. Most of these features are not present in some of the sedans including the one I drive. Airbags are provided for both driver and passenger in front.

Back Cabin: The engineers have not ignored the rear cabin also and if you like to be driven around you will love the back cabin. First thing that impressed me was the division of seat is 60:40 which means there is no hump in between leading to discomfort to the person sitting in center. The seat is fold-able, adjustable to make more space, and there is a laptop charger in the back. Though my wife pointed that there is no space to keep the water bottles for kid as the space in the door for bottle can not fit a water bottle.

Boot: Spacious is the word with 232 litres for all the stuff you want to carry. Both me and Ganesan were carrying all kind of photography equipment in 2 bags and some loose stuff but still it was not even half filled.

Security features: The Vista D90 has the typical  solid steel-Tata feel to it, which is enhanced by ABS, alloy wheels, seat-belt reminder (a very good thing in my opinion). The ground clearance at 165 mm is one of the best in the category, and it comes in handy on those potholed roads. The body has been designed with crumple zones, and comes with air bags for both front seats.

How is Vista D90 to drive :   While returning from drive we stopped at the Old Baobab tree in Nanakramguda village to test Vista D90 on some more bad roads and to take some pictures of Baobab before  hitting back home. We were relaxing at my home and suddenly almost after 3 hours  later Ganesan realized that he has forgotten his camera flash on a stone near the Old Baobab.

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This is when I truly handled the car as initially, I was driving the brand new car a bit cautiously while learning the features and handling. The moment we realized that we have left the flash for the camera, I asked Ganesan to hop into Vista D90 and zoomed towards the Baobab tree. It was peak office rush hour time in the evening and I got to feel of the responsiveness of the steering, firmness of the brakes  and that tingling in stomach when your car engine responds to your desire to overtake ( it is a Quadrajet engine with  90 PS Power at 4000 RPM and 200 NM torque  at 1750-3000 RPM if you must know and care about). The gear shift was a bit hard, but as it was a new vehicle I would like to discount the same. Fortunately nobody had touched the flash light of the camera and it was still on the stone Ganesan had left it. We hugged the old Baobab like we had in our earlier visit and thanked him to to keep an eye on the Flash and headed home. This time I took the highway back home and the speedometer touched 145 KM per hour just a shade below  the top speed of 158 KM claimed by Tata motors, which I decided not to test as we were about to reach the toll plaza so I slowed down after 145. (I recommend you to respect speed limits; we were getting itchy feet on an access controlled toll road so took liberty on a lonely stretch)

I will not go in details of the tech specs of the car as you can check the same here at the official page of the Tata Vista D90.

Overall  Tata Vista D90 is a spacious  feature rich car with great looks and good handling both on highway as well as city conditions. The Tata Vista D90 has been officially launched in price range of 5.6 to 7.7 lakh ex showroom Hyderabad depending on the variant.

In the evening I took my kids and wife for a dinner to a new restaurant that has opened close to our home, but that my dear reader is another blog post.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the post are mine and have not been influenced in any way by Tata Motors or Blogadda

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