Though this review comes after a long while, it carries with it some salient points about the Chevrolet Beat which is now in an improved version with a diesel heart and much unlike its predecessor where some key areas are concerned. It was a sweltering hot winter afternoon in Bangalore when I decided to take up the test drive for this car. Briefly I will take you over with the process so you may understand this car all the way from the dealership perspective upto the drive itself.
Dealerships
Firstly and interestingly a google search for Chevy dealers in Bangalore throws up only three results which are shown below:
Kropex India Ltd
Address:49/1 Singasandara, Hosur Main Road, Bangalore.,
Bangalore, Karnataka, 560068
Phone: 080-43574357 / 09663388830 / 9663388812
Fax: 080-43574353
Email: kropex.sales@gmidealer.com
Sundaram Motors
Address:P.B.No 5358,107, Kasturba Road, Bangalore.,
Bangalore, Karnataka, 560001
Phone: 080 – 22070709 – 13 / 22070751 – 3 / 9880631313
Email: sundaram2.sales@gmidealer.com
Trident Chevrolet
Address:No.122/1, C. Shankar Reddy Layout, Kalyan Nagar Outer Ring Road, Bangalore.,
Bangalore, Karnataka, 560043
Phone: 080- 43430500
Email: tridentban.service@gmidealer.com
Upon visiting Kasturba road for a different reason which i will come to in a different post, I found that the Sundaram GM dealership was under lock and key and they seemed to have moved elsewhere. While I did not care to check, I also knew the Outer Ring Road showroom was a mere showroom of a very small size without any servicing options. I do remember there was one on Mahadevapura Main Road leading to whitefield, but it was somehow conspiciously missing from out here in this list above !! Since the Singasandra one was near my home, I reached there after informing apriori that I would be there.
Cars in the showroom
The showroom itself is impressive with an entire range of cars put up there under the Chevry Umbrella starting from the barebones Spark upto the Fully loaded Captiva. The Sail sedan and hatch are yet to make it even to showrooms as they were just recently showcased at the auto expo in Delhi.
A friendly supervisor let me meddle with all cars including the Cruze until the test drive itself was ready. One thing that struck me immediately was that all Chevy cars were low in seating much like yours truly Honda. Somehow I think these are not suitable with back problems for easy ingress/egress. The Beat thankfully was a bit more supportive of the driver if not necessarily the passenger.
Chevy Beat
(Image courtesy: www.chevrolet.co.in)
As we already know, the petrol Beat has been doing its rounds for a year or more now so many people already know the cockpit internals of the car along with a billion digital meters and displays. So its worthwhile just dwelling into the new diesel and outlining its good points and pitfalls. My test drive was about 3-4 kms which included great highway roads, congested city roads, broken gravel roads, ditches and road humps, curves and straight lines and some U-turns. This was a clear representation of what a test drive must be like. So how did the Beat Diesel perform? Read on!
