Even hatchbacks like the Hyundai i20 & Honda Jazz were a tad too long for the parking space.
BHPian locusjag recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
In India, we find ourselves at a point in time when tin cans are being kicked around. There’s no popular wisdom in owning one, much less if you go on to own one for more than a decade.
So it came to pass that my elder sister’s family recently embarked on a car upgrade quest from her Silver-coloured, 2008 November manufactured Tin Can, a silver-coloured 2nd hand Suzuki Swift VXi. Being a Car consultant to family & friends, the quest fell on me to be taken forward.
Introducing the incumbent:
We first set our eyes on it in December 2011 at a Maruti TruValue lot in Chennai. It had barely run 10,000 Km in its 3 years since manufacture. I and my brother-in-law couldn’t believe it; we’d seen our fair share of doctored odometers in our prolonged search in the used car market, so there was nothing to be done except to get our FNG mechanic’s help evaluating its genuine-ness.
His garage happened to be right across the road from the TrueValue showroom, happily for us. He took one look at the engine and at the odometer and said that it was a genuine case. Perhaps it had been repossessed on a bad loan – who knows? The fact of the matter was after our mechanic took her for a test spin, we got ourselves a pristine, good-as-new Swift for 3.75 Lacs in December 2011.
The car has been in the family ever since; it has run only 45,000 km more in all the time that has elapsed till now. This understated and ubiquitous car has mostly clocked only highway miles for the most part, on road trips to hill stations, temple towns and assorted far-flung destinations. It has seldom been used on city roads, in stop-go traffic.
In praise of the machine:
In recent times, I remember getting surprised by its superior speed on the highway, when compared to my 2018 TUV 300. I know that my TUV is no speed demon, but this ancient Swift showed me the meaning of speed on a family road trip to Ooty from Chennai. All of the luggage had been stowed away in my TUV’s 3rd row and the elderly were with me. The Swift was full of the younger ones in the family. And boy, did they make me feel old all along during the trip!
The Swift would beat us by a full 15 minutes to every coffee/food stop on the way. On that trip, it would apparently hit high 3 digit speeds on the highway, putting newer/sportier cars to the test – if the younger ones in the family are to be believed.
Personally, I have never driven it faster than 100 Kmph, given its lack of ABS and airbags and our desi driving conditions. Fresh off the True Value parking lot in 2011, I remember grinning at the wheel of the car since its peppy engine was a revelation for me. And I do recall making a 500 Km highway trip with it back in 2012; I was able to achieve a fuel efficiency of 20 Kmpl by sticking to 2000 RPMs in it at ~80 Kmph.
The Suzuki Esteem’s 1.3-litre engine that was plonked into the first generation Swift is still a worthy motor, even today.
The itch for a new car:
Now, you have to understand what sort of a person my brother-in-law (here on referred to as my “BIL”) is. He is an “offline” sort of person and doesn’t partake in the online frenzies that we younger people are often a part of. Think of him as the quintessential Clint Eastwood spaghetti-Western movie cowboy character, squinting out at a dry world with eyes that constantly size up approaching adversaries far out in the desert. He is worldly-wise (unlike myself) and he knows the true worth of money. He knows where a car belongs in the pecking order of life’s needs and wants. Don’t get me wrong – he’s all for taking out our own cars on every outstation trip; we’ve never gone by train or bus ever since 2011. It’s just that he knows the true financial costs involved in buying and owning a car. In the time that I’ve been splurging away on transient and depreciating assets, he has acquired many appreciating assets.
He has seen me buy an “SUV” (if you can call the TUV 300 that) in the 11 years that have elapsed since he bought the Swift. He sees all these newer machines being driven around by the rest of us. He has felt the need for a bigger boot space (the first-generation Swift came with only 235 litres of boot space if memory serves me right). And even he, of all the nonchalant people in the world, has become slightly bored with the old!
The search for a new car:
As a “car consultant”, it is my job to evoke and evince interest from whoever it is that I’m trying to help buy a car. So I absolutely went all in, sending used car ads to my BIL. I sent him 3-row utility vehicle ads. These were mere sparks in the desert; I just couldn’t get him to smile or even move a facial muscle.
I moved on to sedans – he briefly looked at used sedans such as the Amaze, City etc. But we had to rule them out for parking reasons. His allotted parking slot in his apartment which was built in 2005 only stretches out to 3.9 m, and he needs to park a 2 wheeler width-wise behind the car. Any longer cars would put him in conflict with other residents in the apartment, as there was a common walking space to be used by every resident behind the said parked 2 wheeler
So we moved on to used hatchbacks. But again – most hatchbacks were simply too long for his use case. Obviously, I had to rule out the i20s and Jazzes of the world. Even the Grand i10 was a tad too long, at 3.8 metres. We had to look at used examples of the all-new Hyundai Santro since it matched the First Generation Swift’s length at ~3.6 metres. We could’ve opted for a used Grand i10 and made it work somehow in the parking space, or we could have opted for a Santro – but at that point, it occurred to my BIL and I that we weren’t really gaining much over the incumbent car. Power, space, reliability…whichever metric we applied, the incumbent car was still the best car for my BIL! And the Santro would have been a downgrade in power vis-a-vis the Swift. Very quickly, my BIL shut down the entire conversation on cars. He would have none of it. And I didn’t think of bringing it up again either.
An unexpected conclusion to the car hunt:
Once it became clear that hanging on to the current car was a no-brainer, we asked our good old mechanic to assess it and he recommended a suspension overhaul and he said it was still a great car. So we went ahead and got its suspension overhauled at his garage sometime in mid-2021; I don’t recall how much it cost us exactly. But in the aftermath of the servicing, the car is back to its composed self.
The impact of the real estate market on the automotive market:
It would be amiss of us at this juncture to not look at how the real estate market affects our automotive choices – choices we get and the choices we make. My BIL bought this 3BHK apartment in 2005 at a prime location in Chennai for a now-unbelievable price, at a now-unbelievable fixed home loan rate. His Rs 8000 EMI is going to end this year and his apartment’s value has multiplied many times over in the time since. There’s no room to fault his home for his lack of choices in the automotive market, quite frankly. His apartment is beyond sensible, superb even, as an investment.
However – the apartment’s builder in 2004/2005 had seen fit to only provide a parking lot that’s yay long (to liberally apply a typical British description of lengths/spaces). The structure itself is well built and has left no room for any complaints. But I see the parking lot there and it’s full of i10s and first-gen Swifts, our own included. My BIL can sell his apartment for 90 lacs today easily and yet, only a small car can fit in there!
Let’s move on to another, more current example; I have been hunting recently for a rental home myself in South Chennai. Every apartment that I saw had only a 4m long parking space provided for each flat. There was a newly built 3 BHK apartment costing 75 lakhs that came only with a 4m slot; there was no way I could park my TUV 300 and my RE Electra and my dad’s scooter. We had to reject the apartment. And I found that sufficient parking for a 4m+ vehicle plus 2 wheelers was available only in costly apartments that came with snob value, and these are residential options that my family frowns upon for the snobbery involved.
Anyway, in all apartments with 4m parking slots, there are families that are constrained to buying cars that fit there – if at all they buy cars. They don’t really have many options in the automotive market, not unless they’re prepared to park in the street or to shell out upwards of 1 crore INR on what I call snobbish residential options.
And if you’re looking to build your own home with a spacious parking area, it costs Rs.1500 to Rs.1700 per square foot today (in Chennai) just to build such an open space in your home! A fully built-up area in a home will cost you Rs.2000 to 2200 per sq ft today in Chennai, for reference. That’s just way too costly. It makes sense for aspiring homeowners to just allow space for a small parking area and to spend precious money on the actual home. Most of today’s newly built homes will allow only sub 4m cars to be parked!
A lot of this must be obvious to most of us – but this hadn’t really struck me until now. Real estate dictates our automotive choices, and how!
Tail wags the dog, or dog wags the tail?
Only a car-crazy person such as myself would ever entertain a thought such as this – “when I build my dream home, I will set aside the entire ground floor as an open stilt-parking area so that I can buy whatever cars my heart will desire”. But the middle class lives in a highly uncertain world that is only supplied with money in the present; the future holds no promises. It just doesn’t make sense for the salaried class to allow the tail to wag the dog. Worst come, you’ve got to be able to surgically excise the tail in order to save the dog! I mean, a car doesn’t even figure in Maslow’s hierarchy.
The bottom line is this: My BIL is comfortably placed in life only because of his no-nonsense approach to life and his finances. He owns multiple properties, most of which are fully paid for. He has 2 older kids’ education to pay for and a daughter’s marriage to conduct in the next 5-7 years or so. I tip my hat to him for keeping his wits about him; it’s easy for a layman to get drawn into an arms race with folks in the neighbourhood who zip around in new cars.
Epilogue:
The 2008 Swift Vxi still does highway runs regularly in the family. I drove it from Chidambaram to Chennai in November 2021, through a mix of broken state highways and national highways. My BIL drove it from Chennai to Hosur in December 2021 and it returned a fuel efficiency of 19 km/l. It remains faultless and does what is asked of it. As of today, it has only ~57,000 km on the odometer and is a timeless gem in the family. We are prepared to get its Fitness Certification done come November 2023 and we have no doubt that this “tin can” will munch highway miles as long as we ask it to do so.
Here’s what BHPian Rajeevraj had to say on the matter:
It is very true that proper parking is a low priority for most builders even today. In Bangalore also, most apartments built in the 2000-2010 timeframe never had even one parking per apartment allotted. As a result, if you visit such apartments ( am talking even larger luxury apartment complexes), you see spaces marked for parking all over the place to try to fit in the delta between flats and spaces available. This is of course compounded by the fact that a 2nd car is also a norm in a lot of these places. So when slots themselves are limited, not surprised that existing ones are very limited in size.
While it is kind of understandable for older apartments as the number of mass-market models were limited and mostly focused on smaller cars, what is surprising is that even today a lot of builders are focussed on cramming more apartments into the space available and parking is still an afterthought. I have recently visited friends who have purchased villas for 2-3 crores in the outskirts of Bangalore and even there, one car barely fits in the parking. If it is a 7-seater type it juts out of the parking. A second car has to be parked on the road.
Proper parking for any sized car was a primary criterion for me when I purchased a flat and fortunately, it worked out.
I kind of feel for your BIL though. Getting stuck with such a situation. Fortunately, as you have said, he probably considers a car as an A to B kind of thing and running also does not seem to be high. But a good point to remember for anyone planning to purchase/build an apartment or house today.
Here’s what BHPian ashis89 had to say on the matter:
One of the major reasons for vacating my previous rented flat was its parking slot. One had to navigate through a maze to reach my spot (and that itself involved a 3-point turn). That’s still manageable.
My spot was wide enough to hold my Seltos and leave about 6 inches gap to open the door. So I had to open the door slowly, place my hand on the outer edge of the door so my hand touches my neighbour’s car when I try to wriggle out. And like that cherry on top, the approach to the slot was a narrow tight 90-degree turn with pillars on one side and a neighbour’s car on the other, which needed n-point turns. The space was enough for a small hatch but not a 4m+ car. Every time I had some work, I tried my best to avoid taking out of the car because of the hassle.
While house hunting, I did (and will do) a recce of the parking and realised that many tier 2 &3 builders build make-shift spaces and call it parking. Mind you, this is Bengaluru I am talking about!
My sister’s place in Vijayawada has well-organised parking and the slots are wide enough. However, the ‘roads’ within the parking are not wide enough for 4m+ cars to turn in the spot easily. Again, the length is barely a couple of inches more than the length of my car.
Here’s what BHPian Samurai had to say on the matter:
This is a very important aspect. The parking slot can literally determine what you can buy, more than the budget. I mean budget can be stretched, but the parking slot doesn’t stretch.
For nearly 10 years, I rented an apartment in Bangalore which had a horrible parking slot. I had difficulty parking my wife’s i10 at first. The association then moved the makeshift wall next to the parking slot to give some space to open the door. There was no question of upgrading the car while being in that flat. It was a corner slot, and if either of my neighbours park their cars even 6 inches back, I couldn’t park the i10. I had to rely on renting another slot for Grand Vitara, and that was not always available. This is in a building where many apartments have large parking lots, and many even have two parking lots.
When we finally decided to buy a flat in 2019 in the same building, we knew what came first. First I got the list of all the flats available for sale. Then I visited the basement to check the parking slot of each apartment on sale. Only once the parking slot was acceptable, did we approach the owner for negotiation. I could have bought the apartment I rented for at least 40L less (it was smaller), if not for the parking issue. But I opted for a bigger flat just to get a proper parking slot. Now I have a huge parking lot where i10 is parked. The GV is still parked in a rented slot.
Keyword: Poorly designed apartment parking is affecting car-buying decisions