Tata Zest vs Tata Manza [2011-2015]

You never know when it’s going to rain especially when it comes to the Mumbai monsoons and you don’t stand a chance when the downpour begins. It was about that time of the year again and after the horrendous summer, I was elated having the Zest to save me from the first rains. As the showers tried to cool down the baked crust in vain, I was happily weaving through the city traffic in the compact sedan from my home in a Mumbai suburb to the new Bombay, ohhh, Navi Mumbai!

The Tata Zest was the second car to arrive in our long term garage for 2015. Its compact proportions and peppy little 1.2-litre Revotron engine prompted me to cover over 700km in just 14 days. The car that we had got was pretty much new as it had just covered 778km before reaching our garage. This meant that the cabin or even the whole car for that matter had not yet got the ‘tough’ treatment meted to media fleet vehicles and it was up to us to get things going

The past few years haven’t been good to Tata Motors’ passenger car division. It has had a few good products, but there always was something that didn’t sit right. Of course, there were even more things that were brilliant about the products, but desirability, one of the most important things in an economy such as ours where a car still remains in large part a luxury rather than a necessity, was absent. Tata has now recognised this, and has thrown everything they have behind the new range of products that will launch from now on, and it all begins with this small car that will replace the cheapest sedan on the planet – the Tata Zest. Does it manage to deliver what Tata so badly needs?