Ahead of its time, brilliant, misunderstood, we are not talking about ourselves.
We're talking about cars that didn't quite make it in spite of them being all those words.
They didn't make it because people didn't take it, simple.
These are our top 10 underrated cars.
Starting with the car number one! Uno, no not the car, that was a...
The first car actually is a very old school, very cool looking car,
it's called the Standard Herald. Isn't that the newspaper?
What confused you? The Business Standard part or the Standard, the Herald part?
I think everything confused...
Debuted in India somewhere around the 1960s,
it was competition to the HM Ambassador, the Premier Padmini and they killed off the
Standard Herald, mainly because it was way ahead of its time.
It had a gorgeous, gorgeous design.
Car number two, is the Maruti Suzuki Kizashi.
And Raunak has a Kizashi, he owns it. I didn't buy it first hand.
It got launched between 2011 and 2014, it was a great car then,
but nobody understood how great it is because it was just overpriced
and no one wanted to pay that much money for a Maruti. What was the price?
It was anywhere between 16 and 18 lakhs. He's driving a 20-lakh rupee Maruti?
Yeah, and that too 10 years ago, imagine. Yeah, and the point is, even today, if Maruti,
let's say came out with a car that cost 18 to 20 lakh, would you buy it?
So yeah, that's car number two, that's the Kizashi, Sigashi I was going to say. Sigashi.
Say Kizashi three times. Kizashi, Kizashi, Wagon R.
Car number three is a car that I dearly love. I don't know why this didn't do well again,
it's the Skoda Fabia. You can say that this was one of the first premium hatchbacks
in India.
Premium features, premium feel, an expensive looking car.
And it did well, but it did well in South Bombay, but that doesn't really count, yeah,
because that doesn't make up the entire country. Was price a factor? Price was a huge factor.
I know, that's a different country altogether, yeah. Just like Kerala.
Price was a huge factor, what was also a big factor was the fact that
no one wanted to pay so much for a Skoda, it was relatively unknown.
And I think 10 years ago...
One story, my friend had a Skoda Fabia and then he rolled that thing, rolled it
So, next thing I know, it's there in the shop and a week later, it's back as good as new.
Oh. Those things are built to last.
Yeah, it was super sturdy.
What led it down was its, kind of dated interiors.
Correct, so that brings us to the end of the Fabia story, we'll move on to the fourth one.
Yes. Number four.
Okay, what do we have on number four? I don't know, I forgot.
Okay, while everyone was going gaga over the Honda City, and it's 1.5-litre engine,
there was also a little brother called the 1.3.
Yeah, the 1.3 City was underrated, honestly, because
it still made a decent amount of power for that time, it was still stupidly fast.
Especially compared to the icon 1.6
or even if you compare it to the Escort, the Baleno, that times one I know,
not the hatchback we know right now.
Wasn't that a car that used to be modded a lot?
But everybody mostly swayed towards the 1.5-litre.
Let's say you find a 1.3 City on the market right now,
would you actually buy it? Would you actually pick up one right now?
Depends.
On?
Salary
How much money I make.
We really need to... Unionize man, we need to unionize.
Give us money!
Number five on the list, five.
Five
Okay, it's the 1.5-litre Getz.
Ah, okay!
Way back when Hyundai came out with the Getz, and then after a while they saw,
okay, fine it's doing well enough,
so they decided to just plonk in a performance variant of it.
Like we do, yeah, like you do, like you should, but it had a 1.5-litre CRDI engine which made a bucket
load of torque and the problem is, this made the Getz into a typically American muscle car.
Because there was so much torque steer,
you couldn't do anything else, so you just had to battle through.
The problem why the Getz didn't work is because nobody gets it.
That was car number five, we'll move on to the sixth car in the list.
All right so number six
on our list is a Ford. No, it's not the Ford... Mustang?
No, it's the Ford Mondeo.
Mondeo was close enough.
Again, another Ford, Ford Fusion also was underrated so, honourable mention to that.
Honourable mention, but yeah, Ford Mondeo of course.
It was way too expensive for a Ford, people didn't want to spend that much money on it,
beautifully kitted out, most amazing interior.
If you remember after that they came out with the Ghia, that was a great car as well.
But, just, no one wanted to pay that much for a Ford which doesn't make sense to me, it was that, meh.
Which is why you also see a lot of manufacturers today launch halo car so that people know
they understand that,
you know what, we can build something like this, but we also have project cars.
Potential distilled down, status.
Absolutely.
So, number seven on the list is my personal favourite, the Volvo V40 Cross Country.
A car that I just don't fit in.
You might do like a Mr. Bean thing. Mr. Bean thing. Yeah!
Yeah, just open the sunroof, dude.
Okay, why didn't you like it Peddy?
Oh man I love the four wheel drive on it. Throw it into corners and then I could feel all
the four wheels scrambling for grip and then the car will basically take care of you. Yeah.
Also, it's a very good looking car. Oh yes.
Yeah dude, I really like the way Volvo designs their cars. Yeah, but the V40,
I think the primary reason it didn't work was because, who wants to spend in excess of
40 lakhs for a hatchback. Wow. No one. I would if I had the money. I mean, I would of course, yeah.
So the next on the list is the Octi Combi.
This one's a puzzler, the Octavia is a great car.
Everyone can admit to that, right?
Add the practicality of an estate to it, just makes sense!
You know, car being long, low, you're struggling with ground clearance, you're struggling with
parking space, especially in cramped up cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, it's going to be a big
problem and I think that is one of the major contributing factors to why it didn't work.
But that was car number eight, the Skoda Octi Combi.
And we'll jump to car number nine and that is, the Baleno Altura.
Also another victim to the estate jinx that we seem to be having in India.
Come on people.
It just makes sense.
So what did the Baleno Altura make back then? Make in what sense? Power, dude.
What'll it make, babies? It made the standard amount that a Baleno made.
This was of course not the hatch we have right now, this was the sedan.
And it made roughly around, what, 90 horsepower. Back in the day it was, was great.
A decent number, yeah. Slap on some nice rims on them,
put them on nice coil overs and they look bomb.
We still haven't warmed up to the estate idea,
think about the RS6 Avant, such a beautiful car.
Yeah, but...I agree it's way, way too expensive, but it still makes so much sense,
you have the performance end, which is basically an RS6, slap on an estate to it,
it's perfect car. It definitely doesn't work for Raunak or Peddy,
probably not for me as well,
but what about you? Let us know in the comment section below.
And that brings us to the final car, it's actually not a car, it's an engine config. Number ten on the list is
pretty much most of the V6s, like the Superb, you have the Accord, the Grand Vitara.
Oh. So we have pretty much all those V6s which didn't do well.
Why do you think? I think fuel efficiency was a major concern and this just didn't fit in.
That's a great point again, also the one thing that you both are overlooking is that, price.
Oh, yes.
And that made a big difference, people didn't want to pay extra for, well,
you get great performance but, it wasn't that important for them.
Was maintenance a problem as well?
Maintenance, yes, obviously will factor in, but generally it's not because of the V6
it's more because of the kind of the car that you're buying, a Superb will be
difficult to maintain compared to obviously a Wagon R.
Cars, if you go to buy them in the market right now,
they will be at an extremely low price,
for example, the Accord V6 if we go to buy right now, will be under four lakh rupees. Yeah.
Probably CardDekho.com is where you find it. CarDekho, there you go.
Superb!
Alright, with that, we come to the end of another episode.
We hope you liked it.
Then, if you did, then, what should they do if they liked it?
I think like, if you liked it, also comment, subscribe, share it with your friends, put the word out
that there is a lot of cool content happening over here at PowerDrift.
And one thing we need to reiterate is the fact that, this is our list, you can have, obviously,
there are plenty more underrated cars in the country.
We just made this list just sitting over here, just now, so
obviously fill up that comment section, tell us exactly what you think is an underrated car.
And also what other Listicle video would you like to see here on PowerDrift.
Can you stay away from the word 'listicle', it just sounds... sounds very low hanging and...
yeah, it's a very low hanging fruit.
But the point is, this is easy content, this is great content,
I mean, I don't know if it's great content, but it's fun to make and I hope you enjoyed it,
and that brings us to an end.
Thank you so much for watching. My name is Varun Painter
he's Raunak Ajinkya, that's Rohit Pediredla... and he will see you later.
Yeah, and only I'll see you later. Bye. Bye.