New-Age Rivalry

There’s a good chance that your next car will be a crossover. But what happens to the luxury stakes when you go from a sedan to an SUV? Well, we put two similarly priced luxury cars together – one sedan and the other an SUV – to find out.

- Abhishek Chaliha

I can’t remember exactly when, but sometime in the early nineties we were driving to a tea club in a Maruti Suzuki Gypsy when my dad pointed to a purple sedan heading in the same direction and said, “That car comes with air conditioning.” Now, being a young car aficionado, I was struck by both amazement and amusement. Later, when we met his friend whose car it was, I anxiously asked if I could see the ‘air-conditioner’ in the car. As he fumbled for the keys in his pocket, I attempted to peek into the cabin through the side window. But the tint was so dark that all I could see was my own nose being squished against the glass. But when he did finally open the door, I was totally disappointed!

You see, what I was expecting was a full size window AC fitted bang in the centre of the dashboard. But what this Premier 118NE had instead were fiddly little air vents much like those in a Maruti 800. Well, that’s not going to work I thought!

Nevertheless, peeking in through the window of a new car is always exciting – isn’t it? For me, at least, a lot of a car’s character lies in how the cabin looks and feels – its overall ambience and the kind of equipment it has. And when it comes to this stuff, it’s invariably the luxury cars that offer the most characterful and tasteful cabins.