Value War

The Creta may be the outright king of the compact SUV space but is it a product that is wellrounded enough to be competitive in the more price-sensitive side of the segment. We put it up against the VFM kings of the segment, Grand Vitara and Honda Elevate, to find out how these SUVS fare against each other

- Dipayan Dutta

As far as cash cows go it doesn’t get more serious than India’s compact SUV space. There’s a new player every year, and there are no points for loyalty. The customer wants the latest tech, the most powerful motors, the most convenient gearbox, and efficiency to boot, and they’ll ditch the reigning king in a heartbeat if there’s a better deal around the corner no questions asked.

In anticipation of this OEMs are now trying to bring the most competitive products tailormade to each sub-spectrum of even this space. This brings us to this substratum of the compact SUV space that includes the cars you see in this spread. These are the non-turbo, non-hybrid, value-for-money SUVs in the space and while the hybrid and turbos make the cream of this segment the cars that you see are the ones that do the volumes.

The Creta has been the car to beat ever since it was launched in 2015, and it has stayed ahead of the competition by constantly raising the bar of tech, features and design. Being at the apex and in demand has allowed Hyundai to test the upper levels of what the public is willing to pay, but now the undercutters are here looking to displace the Creta on the value front.

Both the Elevate and the Grand Vitara even in these top-spec variants, are significantly less expensive than the Creta, and while they do miss out on some of the Creta’s segment-beating features, the undercut they offer should at least in theory make them more attractive to customers in the space.