After courting for many years, going out on hundreds of honeymoons together in fancy locales abroad, which masqueraded as Bollywood movies that the couple were featured in and which sponsors and the gullible movie-going public lapped up anyway, Saif and Bebo have finally taken the vows.
This is not a filmy gossip column so I will not dwell any more or conjecture about the marital bliss that the couple may be enjoying right now, but there is one other courtship of Saif’s that didn’t quite succeed as much. This one didn’t come with a pair of long legs, but instead featured four wheels. I’m talking about the Chevy Aveo UV-A.
Despite the Nawab of Bollywood backing the hatch, the Aveo UV-A didn’t quite set the sales charts on fire. Many reasons potentially contributed to the Aveo UV-A’s average performance for a car that was positioned bang in the middle of the fast-growing premium hatch segment. One of them was of course, the lack of a diesel engine. But, it is also a fact that except Shah Rukh Khan no other Bollywood actor has apparently been able to endorse and positively impact the performance of a car in the market.
GM India is now preparing to launch the Sail and it is not clear if the much married Saif will now endorse the new hatch too. But GM has decided to retain the UV-A appendage. So, the new premium small car will be called the Sail UV-A, and should be rolled out within the next few weeks. I join a bunch of other motoring journalists on a test drive organised by GM India and here are my first impressions.
Design
The Sail UV-A is undoubtedly a Chevy. Even if the golden bowtie logo on the grille is hidden you’d still be making a casual, yet studied guess that it is a Chevy. There are a lot of lines that make it part of the Chevrolet brand’s new vehicles meant for the Asian market. But, that hasn’t necessarily translated into a design that really excites or talks to the onlooker like the Beat or the Cruze do. In the new Sail UV-A, design is likely to be least talked about. The lines are squared off and the other elements complement this straight edged look, especially at the front.
However, it is not like the new Chevy is lacking in character. There is still a lot of quality to observe when I look closely at individual features. Unlike many of the other small cars out there that have short stubby bonnets and a cab forward design, the Sail UV-A’s is clearly oriented towards being a better fit for a sedan. So, while the Sail sedan will certainly not have the awkward ‘tall-boy with a boot slapped on at the rear’ stance about it, the long bonnet with squarish headlamps and the classic Chevy grille with logo in the middle gives the hatch a slightly traditional and over-familiar look.
Prominent bonnet ridges and sharp waist and beltlines add to the visual length of the new Sail UV-A. Stalked door mirrors, nicely flared wheel arches and the rectangular rear quarter glass are the features that would catch your attention from the side. The rear again bore a bit of a resemblance to a few other European hatches with its high set tail-lamps. But it is still neatly designed with lines merging seamlessly into other elements.
Referring back to the sedan-oriented design, the A-pillar rises gradually and can be a bit of bother at times increasing the blind spot handicap, but overall visibility is excellent with a lot of glass area. The roofline gradually slopes down towards the rear, but that doesn’t lead to a significant reduction in headroom.
Though the Sail’s design is not as aggressive or novel as the Beat’s, the car has done brilliantly in the Chinese market, where the sedan is made by the GM-SAIC joint venture. Let’s see how it is received by Indian buyers, though it is the hatch that GM must be hoping to clock the numbers from. I am sure that GM is already planning the sedan too, though there are no official confirmations yet.
Interior
The place where the design appeal of the new Sail UV-A takes a positive turn is in its cabin. Step in and the light brown and beige colour theme and the ever so slightly quirky Asian influence in the design of the interior elements strikes you. The triangular door handles and the kinks at the top of the centre stack on the dashboard give the interior design a mild twist.
The rest of the cabin is quite simple in terms of the layout. There is a lot of plastic all around, but I didn’t get the feel of it being tacky. The panels are neatly finished, the knobs and controls are within easy reach and seem to be built to last. The 2-DIN music system is average in terms of output quality, but has been neatly integrated. There has evidently been a lot of effort put into making the cabin a pleasing place to be in. But, material quality could still have been a notch better. For example, the dashboard plastic quality is not non-reflective and so windscreen glare under the noon sun can be distracting. The turn indicator and wiper activation stalks on either side of the steering wheel feel flimsy. One change, though, is that the turn indicator stalk is now to the right of the steering wheel.
The steering wheel itself is chunky and nice to hold. Finished to give it an upmarket look, the steering wheel also offers two horn buttons on either side of the centre panel, which are within easy reach of the driver’s thumb. One nagging issue during my test drive was the position of the power window buttons on the centre console. One is so used to seeing the button on the door panel.
The orange backlit instrument cluster and the info display are appealing to look at. The seats are comfy and well-padded, and sport firm, crisp upholstery. The boot release and bonnet release buttons are pleasantly placed at the correct side of the dashboard within immediate reach for the driver. The amount of legroom available is above average for a car in the small car segment.
Performance
The new Sail UV-A is being offered with a petrol and a diesel engine. The trim I test drove was the top-end diesel variant. GM India officials said that development work on the diesel engine was started in June 2009 after the European version was chosen. But when you look at the architecture of the engine it is the same 1.3-litre diesel engine that Maruti Suzuki and Fiat already use in vehicles like the Swift and the Punto. Much of the work done by GM must have been focused on manufacturing this engine at the same facility where the Beat’s one-litre diesel mill is currently being made.
Though the engine is a product of a GM-Fiat-Suzuki collaboration, this is the first time that GM is shoe-horning it into one of its cars. The 1,248cc engine is a 4-valves per cylinder unit working at 1,400 bar common rail injection pressure. The engine is rated to deliver a peak power of 57.4 kW (about 78PS) at 4,000 rpm and a peak torque of 205 Nm at 1,750 rpm.
The engine is faintly familiar when I step into the Sail UV-A and revs easy just like in the other cars. The cabin is well-insulated, both due to the NVH work done by GM India engineers and thanks to the relative refinement of the engine. Start off on to the road and there is a faint lag as torque gets delivered to the wheels. But keeping the engine in the region of about 1,800 to 2,000 rpm can yield satisfying results, as the peak torque band can get ahead on the road as long as the traffic is moving.
The other engine on offer is the 1,199cc B-DOHC ‘Smartech’ petrol engine. This four-cylinder unit produces 86PS of peak power at 6,000 rpm and a peak torque of 113 Nm at 5,000 rpm. Compared to the diesel powertrain’s manual tranny, the petrol engine is paired with a slightly different five-speed manual transmission with different ratios and a different gating too.
The diesel Sail UV-A is said to offer a rated fuel efficiency of 22.1 kmpl and the petrol is said to be capable of stretching the litre to 18.2 kms.
Ride and Handling
During my test drive, it became quickly obvious that the Sail UV-A’s steering has been tuned to suit city users. The steering is really light and a breeze to manoeuvre in tight city conditions. There was almost no feedback from the steering, but surprisingly, it was quite precise. During the winding stretches going uphill from Lonavla to Aamby Valley, the Sail UV-A’s steering managed to put the car where I intended to.
The other likeable part about the Sail UV-A is be its suspension. GM engineers who tuned the suspension to suit the rough conditions in India, have chosen McPherson Struts for the front and a semi-independent set up for the rear. The car manages to sail over most bad patches of the road. The suspension is stiff enough not to lead to a jarring ride at the rear and pliant enough to still let the Sail UV-A maintain its composure when you are cornering hard. So I got to flog all the power out of the diesel powertrain and put the car where I wanted it to go, but without too much of that involvement being felt on my palms.
The Sail UV-A will be a key addition to GM portfolio in India. Prices are yet to be announced, but I expect it to be in range of Rs 4.5 lakh to Rs 6 lakh. Despite some of the negatives, the Sail UV-A could turn out to be a fairly interesting car with a promise of low ownership cost.
Wonder if the sedan will be more interesting.
muralidhar.s@thehindu.co.in