Chances are that most Tata reviews you’ve read would have gone along the lines of the car (or station wagon or bakkie) being not-quite-up-to-scratch, yet it was always affordable.
And that was Tata’s saving grace — their cars didn’t really match up in the technical stakes to the Germans, the Japanese or even the Koreans, but they were nowhere near as bad as the Chinese and they were mostly very competitively priced.
Until now.
Now, we motoring scribes find ourselves in the position of having to turn our opinions on their heads, again.
The newly launched Tata Indica Vista — which oddly enough does not replace the current Indica, but merely adds to the Indica range — is a really impressive, comfortable, technically sound little hatch, save for two not-so-minor issues.
The first is the price — the Indica Vistas range in price from R119 900 to R139 900 — and the second is that the cars don’t all have anti-lock brakes (ABS) and a driver’s airbag. Only the top-end model has ABS and a driver’s airbag and though there is undoubtedly a very strong argument to be made for South Africans not really giving a toss about these basic safety aids — hence the overwhelming success of the much-reviled CitiGolf — there’s an even stronger argument about the necessity for all passenger vehicles to have these essentials.
After driving the Vistas and being suitably impressed by the adequate handling, the not-so-shabby interior and the general comfy feel of the car, motoring journos sat down to a technical presentation and then, like a pack of ravenous wolves with long streams of saliva hanging from our jowls, we howled mournfully, pounced on the Tata executives and ripped them to shreds over the safety issue.
The suits barely had time to breathe in between the barrage of questions and comments.
Our argument was simple: we hated the CitiGolf, despite the many melodramatic farewells to the car, because it was a display of outdated technology and didn’t have pivotal safety features.
We sometimes unfairly apply the above sentiment to just about every car launched in South Africa and we forget that our fellow countrymen are not as pedantic about safety as we are and this is why the CitiGolf sold for as long as it did.
So, while motoring hacks huffed and puffed and tried to blow Tata’s house down, we concede that we don’t understand the psyche of the South African car-buyer as much as we’d like to believe we do.
In its defence the Tata team explained that it had already developed the ABS and airbag technology and, if required by law, it could easily ensure that all new Indica Vistas come equipped with these features. The team said it didn’t fit ABS and airbags to all the models to keep costs down and because market research indicated that consumers interested in spending about R120 000 on a car didn’t care about safety features.
So, you can’t really blame Tata for this decision, but you can blame them for not being progressive in supplying these pivotal features as there are manufacturers who sell cheaper cars that have, at least, ABS.
But it must be said that the new Indica feels light years ahead of the first Indica and it has a raft of impressive standard features, such as power steering, air con, central locking and more.
The engine on all three models is a 1,4-litre petrol, which feels neat and zippy, and the Indica Vistas come standard with a three-year/100 000km warranty, three-year/75Â 000km service plan, as well as roadside assistance for two years/unlimited kilometres.