The Tiago, Tata Motors’ small car launched last year, is a runaway success. The reasons are good design, refined petrol and diesel engines, competitive pricing, and smart positioning in the market segment.
The Tiago, Tata Motors’ small car launched last year, is a runaway success. The reasons are good design, refined petrol and diesel engines, competitive pricing, and smart positioning in the market segment. Now, to attract more first-time car buyers to the world of gearless driving, the company has launched the XTA AMT (automated manual transmission) variant. Available in petrol, the Tiago XTA is priced Rs 4.79 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). We drive it. Tata Motors’ AMT is called Easy Shift. The gear lever looks like the regular fully automatic car’s gear lever and has four positions – (A) automatic, (N) neutral, (R) reverse and (M) manual. By pressing the brake pedal you can shift into (A), and as you release the brake pedal, the car starts moving. There is also an (S) button on the gear lever – it stands for sport. The Revotron 1199cc engine powering the Tiago XTA is a three-cylinder unit. Its maximum power output is 85PS and the maximum torque it produces is 114Nm. It’s slightly noisier than other similar sized engines.
For ease of manoeuvrability in heavy traffic conditions and during parking, the Tiago XTA comes with an inbuilt ‘creep’ feature, which enables the car to crawl as soon as the pressure is eased off the brake pedal, without pressing the accelerator, adding greater level of comfort. In addition, the Tiago XTA has the S mode – in the S mode, the Easy Shift AMT shifts into higher gears at higher engine speeds, or RPM, thus giving you the extra acceleration needed on the highways and while overtaking. AMT, be it in any car, is an ideal technology for India’s traffic conditions, reducing the stress of driving at an affordable price, and without compromising on fuel-efficiency – the Tiago XTA’s claimed fuel-efficiency is more than 23kpl. While driving during peak traffic hours in Delhi, we got a mileage of 16kpl, and it increased to about 20kpl on the highway when driving at a constant speed of 80kph.
As noted earlier, the best thing about the Tiago XTA is its price – at a little over Rs 5 lakh (on-road price), you get the automatic gearbox driving experience. And because the Tiago XTA gets additional features such as “Crawl Function”, “Sports Mode” and manual shift option, it makes for an advanced AMT package at an affordable price. The deal is sweetened by the fact that the Tiago XTA also gets comfort and convenience features such as front and rear power windows, remote central locking with flip key, Harman infotainment system, full wheel caps, electrically adjustable outside mirrors, rear parking sensors, turn-by-turn navigation, Juke-Car App, among others. And the Tiago has more cabin space than most of its competitors.
