Verna - The Best in Class?

27 October, 2006

The most awaited Verna finally launched in India. Verna can be considered as one of the most shock wave-creating cars in India, within first five days of its launch over 2000 Verna cars had been sold. Competition seems to be in shock.

Like Accent, Verna is launched in both petrol and diesel engine options. Petrol Verna has 1.6 liter, 4-cylinder, DOHC, VTVT (Variable Timing Valve Train) engine which produces power of 103 horses. 1.5 liter, 4-cylinder, DOHC, CRDi, VGT (Variable Geometry Turbocharger) diesel engine produces 110bhp. Surprisingly Verna diesel is quicker than its petrol counterpart which is not an obvious thing around. Diesel engines have always been cursed for high NVH (Noise-Vibration-Harshness) factor but trust me, this Verna CRDi is well capable of proving it wrong. In spite of the fact that it has a turbocharger which makes a diesel car even more noisy, Verna CRDi is virtually as silent as Verna petrol, in fact if you find Verna CRDi more silent then there is no wonder.

Power performance of petrol Verna is good, engine is very much refined and seems quite responsive but still it lacks the ultra-smoothness of Honda City and is not as quicker as Fiesta 1.6. Diesel Verna leaves the competition behind, thanks to those 110 black horses that work non-stop under the hood. Despite of having numerous power, diesel Verna lacks in initial pickup. People might opt for Fiesta just because of the fact that Verna doesn't give that push on lower RPMs that it is supposed to give. Verna goes crazy once you start pressing the accelerator a bit hard, and there is no match for it thereafter, its a clear winner. No Duratec, no VTEC, no VGiS can dare challenge this diesel monster.

Comfort levels are quite good, I wasn't expecting them to be like this, there is marginal refinement over Accent. Suspensions give you a feel, 'yes this car is meant for India', no bumpy rides. Car handles very well too. 65 profile tyres (185/65 R14) on petrol and 70 profile (175/70 R14) on diesel ensure good balance of ride quality, handling and suspension. Interiors are not class, as expected, though they don't give a cheap feeling at all. City is way ahead of Verna in interiors and room. Driving position is good and to make it even better, height-adjustable driver-seat is provided in higher versions. AC is quite effective, cools the cabin quickly. Due to enough power, switching on AC doesn't make any difference in performance.

Exterior design is satisfactory. Its neither great to boast about nor is bad to complaint about. Like all other Hyundai car designs, people have started to criticize Hyundai for design of Verna. After having first glance of Verna, one of CarWale.com colleagues called out, 'Hey, it looks like Baleno from front and Fiesta from behind!'. You can't help it, its inevitable with Hyundai. ABS is available as optional across the range. Its a bit disappointing that Airbags are not provided even as optional. Central Locking is available as standard feature in all the versions and keyless entry in petrol versions except the lowest-end Verna i.

Pricing? Hyundai seems to have created a confusion here. Verna has been placed between very successful mid-sizer Accent and not-so-popular but great value-for-money Elantra. Accent is still coming in all five version i.e. GLE, GLS, Viva, Viva CRDi and CRDi. Though the entry-level Accent i.e. GLE is intelligently priced at around 5.5 lakhs, leaving enough room for Verna but other petrol/diesel versions of Accent seem to create a mess with Verna. Accent CRDi is costlier than Verna Xi. It seems that there is an in-house competition, which doesn't seem to exist for a long time. Verna clearly indicates discontinuation of Accent. At the most, Accent GLE will survive. The only diesel Verna i.e. CRDi VGT costs more than 8 lakhs in Mumbai, which might make people to consider cheaper diesel options like Fiesta. However, now Hyundai has an answer to every question in every segment within 15 lakhs price band.

Finally Indian automotive industry is taking good shape. We have enough options in every segment available. From Maruti to Tata to Honda to Volkswagen to BMW to Porsche, every major world car player is interested to sell its cars to Indian people. Everyday we have a news about some new launch. Verna is just launched and Ford has just announced launch of 1.6 TDCi (diesel) in two months time, Maruti has confirmed discontinuation of Baleno and arrival of new Baleno early next year and last but not the least Chevrolet is planning diesel Aveo soon.