Exterior - Tata Indica Vista QuadraJet road test

The Vista is styled superbly and its organic lines should make it look fresh for quite some time.

Exterior

The Vista looks absolutely smashing at first glance, not just because we’re used to seeing old Indicas everywhere we look, but the paint quality is much better, the panel gaps are smaller, and the car’s size lends it a little more character.

Tata has said that nothing except the smiling grille of the car has been carried over from the old Indica, and we believe them. The first thing that grabs your attention in the front are the large headlamps which make us think of the Peugeot 207 every time we look at them. Their front edge begins from a point just outside the registration plate edges and they sweep back over the wheel arch. Looked at head-on, they seem a little too large for the car. The new wipers have dual pivot points for the left blade, to help clean more glass area. The profile is very Palio-like, but with rounded corners. The wheel arches are flared ever so slightly, but even the optional 14-inch rims don’t manage to fill them out well enough. The crease running along the door handles is a nice touch, but it is also prone to getting dinged in parking lots if someone opens a door against the car – the rub strip may not save it. An interesting design element is the inclusion of the indicator at the rear of the base of the A-pillar. It helps keep the side of the car uncluttered. The rear of the car looks similar to the Indigo Marina’s, largely due to its size and the bumper-to-roof tail-lamps. A large logo sits under the hatch’s glass, and a continuation of the door-handle crease runs between the Telco logo and the Tata badge. The hatch itself feels light to shut, something that women will appreciate, along with the notch at the center of the bottom which you can use to pull the hatch down, instead of getting your hands dirty by holding the outside of the hatch.

The paint quality has improved by leaps and bounds – we’ve seen the Vista in scarlet, blue and grey, and we prefer the blue the most, although the people from Tata tell us that the public prefers the scarlet version. Whatever the colour, the paint has a lot of depth to it. Some panel gaps remain inconsistent and the windscreen is curiously recessed, but it’s an enormous leap forward over the old Indica.