Choosing a New Car

Our trusted Hyundai Getz is getting old. My wife needed to pull over to the side of the road due to engine overheating, call a mechanic, and wait long enough while he examined the problem, go buy required replacement parts, return and install them. This happened twice in a month! Not forgetting to mention that it requires quite a lot of major parts replacement lately and how it disturbs our monthly budget, we think it's time for us to let it go and plan to purchase a new car.

Poltak Hotradero once commented on Steny Agustaf's tweet regarding car purchase basically saying that cars within around Rp200 million price range is the rational choice. I'd have to say I could not agree more with his train of thoughts I even created a chirpstory of his tweets on this matter. New cars that fit this criteria includes: Suzuki Ertiga, Honda Jazz, Toyota Yaris, Mazda2 and Ford Fiesta (the lowest variant). For our personal list, we added Hyundai Grand Avega, since we think that based on our own experience Hyundai is also a decent brand especially looking at how developed and improved they are now, and we really like the design of the Grand Avega. Furthermore, we know a quite knowledgeable and reliable mechanic specializing in Korean cars who can conveniently be called, and do maintenance and repair services at home as well as on the road for emergencies like the above, with a fee significantly lower than the authorized service center!

So now we'll have to screen these available choices and pick the winner. Let's see...

Brand
The strongest brands in Indonesia automobile market are clearly Japanese brands. I found a Facebook note saying that Japanese brands are favorable due to their relatively easy maintenance, good resale value, as well as powerful and durable engines. By this point alone, Hyundai and Ford are out! From the safety aspect, Hyundai Grand Avega is also the worst without features like airbag, ABS/EBD, let alone side impact beams. Considering that if I can only upgrade one aspect of my current ride it would be safety, this is a clear indication that Hyundai Grand Avega won't make any further in this process. We're waiting for further improvements, Hyundai!

That Facebook note further elaborates on the image of each brand. And it states that Mazda is generally considered not so good in terms of fuel economy, but they are characterized as fast and unique (sophisticated & feature-rich). This is also confirmed by my not-so-rigorous qualitative research that Mazda2, although not far behind the others, has worse if not the same fuel economy compared to Suzuki Ertiga, Honda Jazz, and Toyota Yaris. Because good fuel economy is also one of my main considerations, Mazda is out!

So we have Suzuki Ertiga, Honda Jazz, and Toyota Yaris left.

Fuel Economy and Requirement
Browsing around gave me various results in terms of fuel economy. But generally, Suzuki Ertiga is as economic as both Honda Jazz and Toyota Yaris if not better.

Suzuki Ertiga also has the lowest compression ratio of 10:1 among the three, which means that it's the one that should tolerate Premium better, although not recommended, than its 2 contenders who more strictly demand higher octane fuel. Suzuki Ertiga is the winner here!

Price
Not much to say, Suzuki Ertiga is also the cheapest among all.

Seems like we're done, no? Well, not so fast. You might notice that of all the initial choices, Suzuki Ertiga is the only MPV, the others are hatchbacks. In terms of taste, the wife and I prefer hatchbacks over MPVs despite MPV's larger capacity. Then we realized that we overlooked Suzuki Swift! Knowing that Ertiga is basically Swift with 3 rows, and that Swift has similar price and technical specification with Ertiga plus some more (for the GX variant, e.g. disc brake for both front and rear wheels, keyless push start system, keyless entry system, and larger 16" wheels), now we have a winner! Our vote goes to the Suzuki All New Swift GX M/T.

Note: This post is admittedly an over-simplistic approach of choosing a new car, even my actual process was not this simple. However, I think that the above is the easiest and most straight-forward way to convey the message I'm trying to pass.