Buying and owning a Hyundai Venue petrol iMT

Initially, I wanted to look at sedans so decided to check out the Honda City and Hyundai Verna, but our garage size was too small to adjust these cars.

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Hello everyone, this is my first post on the forum, and has the long term review of my Hyundai Venue iMT start from our buying process to the feedback to this date. Pardon me for the long post as I tried to squeeze a lot in here.

So a little background. We owned a 1999 model Maruti 800 which was going strong for the past several years without giving us any serious headaches with the performance.

So fast forward to 2020, with our Maruti showing its age and with my father’s posting back to Ranchi, we decided it was time for a change. Initially, I wanted to look at sedans so decided to check out the Honda City and Hyundai Verna, but our garage size was too small to adjust these cars. Along with that, our new car would be used to go to our native place in Bihar where certain patches were not of good quality. So started to look at the CSUV segment with a budget of 10 lakhs on road. Decided our car would be a petrol as most of our running would be in the city and after many hours of grilling the forum and other resources on the web, we shortlisted 4 cars based on several parameters such as proximity to the service centre at home and native place, cost of ownership, design, etc.

• Tata Nexon.
• Hyundai Venue.
• Kia Sonet.
• Mahindra XUV 300.

So at first, arranged a test drive for the Nexon from the nearby showroom. The TD vehicle was an XZ+, and I  fell in love with the car at first instance. The 1.2l turbocharged engine producing 118 bhp gave a great sense of pleasure while my father took the test drive (I had a learner’s license at that point so couldn’t take the test drive). So I was at the back seat during the test drive, the leg and headroom were ample even for someone who was above 6ft. The suspension felt good for the segment. It was a totally different experience from what I had from the 800. Father drove in all the modes and loved them. Now the final garage test. I kept my finger’s crossed but the Nexon could barely go inside after 15 tries. With a heavy heart had to reject it. And with this, the  XUV300 also got rejected.

Now the next day we got the Kia Sonet. We wanted to test drive the manual, but the salesperson insisted on trying the iMT variant, so the GTX+ turbo petrol iMT was parked at our apartment gates. The car looked stunning, but this time before taking the test drive we decided to first do the garage test. Luckily this time it only took 5 cuts to get inside and outside the garage, we could live with that. Now the test drive. For my father after a few moments of getting adjusted to the drive method, he felt it was flawless. There was almost no jerk felt while changing the gears, the back seats were slightly cramped than the Nexon’s, but were good enough for me (I am 5’6). He loved this new form of clutchless manual and after coming home my father and I decided we can go with this mother wasn’t happy with the budget, so we wanted to test drive the Hyundai Venue iMT.

So next day one of my father’s colleagues who had an iMT SX gave us a full review of the car and also allowed him to drive for some distance. He found this drive to be comparable with the Sonet, with major changes only on the exterior and the infotainment system. That night we had a long discussion with mother and sister giving their nod and finally decided to book the venue SX over the Sonet for:

• Better service as kia was a relatively new brand with a smaller presence.
• The Venue was slightly cheaper than the comparable model of the Sonet.

Booking:

The next day we went to Republic Hyundai to book the Blue Denim Venue SX iMT. We started to negotiate for offers and discounts, but as there was a huge backlog, they didn’t bulge from the quoted price, but we were able to negotiate a good price for our 800 which gave us a reasonable price along with add on accessories. We gave a token booking amount and were promised delivery by Durga Puja (this was during September). From here on our wait for the car started. Durga Puja came, there was no word on when our car would be delivered due to backlog orders and chip crisis( In the meantime I passed my driving test and got a driver’s license). From there on, we used to call the sales representative every two weeks but to no avail, like this 2020 passed.

Then suddenly on 13th January got a call at 8.30 in the evening that the car has been allocated to us. Gave us the VIN and asked us to complete the formalities and pay the remainder as soon as possible. We didn’t want to do that before the PDI, but later after a discussion, we completed the formalities on the 15th and were promised the date of 18th January. Did the PDI a day before.

Delivery day:

On the day of delivery, we went to the showroom at the allocated time and our Blue Denim was there standing, waiting for us to take it home. Added a few accessories some complimentary and some addons. Here we parted ways with our beloved 800 which gave us service for a good 21 years.

The registration couldn’t go through that day as the series had just ended and we had to wait until Monday to get a registration number till then they gave us a temporary number.

So after taking delivery of our car, we went straight to the petrol pump and then to the Hanuman temple, but had to do the puja in a hush as one Netaji had to go the airport and the temple was in the way, so we had to move our car from the spot (great VIP culture).

Anyway, we went home and parked it there.

The next day we kept the car in the parking where I only did a slight front and reverse gear test as I was still afraid to take my car out from there.

Anyway, for the next 3 days, I and my sister took practice drives under the watchful eyes of driver uncle on open roads. After initial hiccups, I was able to adjust to the new driving mechanism and honestly loved it. This was a great exercise which helped us a lot to move from Maruti 800 to the Hyundai Venue and finally, I passed the garage test by putting the car in our cramped garage although it took a good 15 minutes( can do now in under 3).

Not later after that, it went on its maiden long trip to Ara, Bihar (our native place) a good 750 km up and down. It was driven by our driver uncle as it was a long distance journey, it passed gracefully through all the potholes, although the suspension felt a bit stiff, which was natural for a CSUV. The car felt stable at high speeds (we got to a max of 100 kmph) and the turbo engine felt very handy, especially while trying to overtake on highways. The turbo got activated after crossing 2000 rpm but mostly the drive was in a non-rash manner which helped us clock a tank to tank average of nearly 19 kmpl which was good enough. But that said, the boot space was a big boon for us as it easily accommodated 3 huge suitcases. Soon after that, got the car to its first service after 2000 km. The car was cleaned and nothing much was done, but we decided to get an underwater coating just to be on the safe side.

Then in the next 3 months, there were only city rides with the car.

Then we took it for the next long ride to our native, this time was also the same, but while on the return journey the car had to go off-roading due to unavoidable circumstances caused by heavy rains. An Omni 2 cars before us had got stuck in the mud and this being a 2WD I was genuinely afraid but following footsteps of the Safari before us, we were able to sail through despite the car being full to its capacity with 5 grown humans and 3 suitcases along with several small bags at the back.

After this, we took a few long drives in the vicinity of 300 km without any issues.

The likes:

• Left leg screams thank you while stuck in the traffic.
• Car does not stop if a braking makes the car go at lower speeds. Seamlessly got to 24 kmph at 6th gear just got a warning with a beep to pull down the gear to 2nd.
• No visible jerk while changing gears although felt slight jerk while going from 1st to 2nd.
• Turbo catches up quickly at lower gears.
• Got to 50 in 1st gear and 90 in 2nd gear.
• Sunroof is a bonus in the winter.
• NVH is good, the car has been driven at a max speed of 154 kmph and still the car was very stable.
• The chrome on the wheels look beautiful.
• SX model and upwards get instrument clusters which are clean when compared to lower variants.
• The controls on the steering wheel and physical buttons near the infotainment screen are easy to use and well-positioned.
• Extracted long drive mileage of ~19 kmpl great!!! but city mileage was usually ~12 kmpl.

The dislikes:

• No hill hold assist in SX. One has to use the hand brake and accelerator to make it work to not slide back.
• The plastics are slightly of inferior quality,  would have loved the plastics to be better on a car whose on-road price is over 10 lakhs.
• The back seat is slightly cramped, probably the legroom is smallest in the segment. In city rides it’s not an issue but on long rides, it causes some discomfort.
• The turbo lag is visible in higher gears but seems every car in the segment suffers from it.
• The spare tyre is only 15″ while the rest are 16″.
• No wireless charger or Android Auto/ Apple Carplay although wired ones are available in the SX. Would have loved wireless ones though.
• Only 2 airbags in the SX, the SX(O) has 6, this should have been standard equipment across all segments.
• The headlights feel inadequate sometimes and there are no rear wipers.
• Although it was rare, but on 4 separate instances the reverse gear did not deploy on the first try. I had to switch to 1st and then it deployed again, but that accounts for less than 0.1%.

Who should buy this?

• Someone whose most driving is on city roads.
• Someone who mostly likes to drive in a normal fashion with some fun,  as the gear shifts are slightly slower than the manual counterparts at very high speeds.
• Someone who has budget constraints with automatic. This gives the comfort of an automatic while giving you feel of manual while saving around 2 lakhs on road.

Hope this would help!

Thanks.

Keyword: Buying and owning a Hyundai Venue petrol iMT