This ZICA is confident and agile

The whole ZICA experience was put together by Indiblogger who took 60 bloggers from the country for a ride (not literally), a drive actually. So, that Sunday morning there were more than 20 brand new ZICA cars (10 petrol and 10 diesel) were trolling up & down the streets of Goa with a team of three bloggers per car for an ultimate driving experience. Fortunate were those (like yours truly) who had two non-driver bloggers in their car, as then they got to drive the test-vehicle for the full distance.

So, now we continue with my experience with the car. In the last post, we talked about interiors. This time around, I will discuss some of the performance features, which were easily graspable for a novice like me.

I got to drive the diesel variant of ZICA. And almost immediately all of us three— me and two fellow bloggers- Ila Johari alias The Flea market Queen and Divisha Mehta who Thinks Fashion, were quickly relieved that this doesn’t sounds like Indica. For many it would sound like a good compliment. A passenger car gets killed once it gets fancied by the taxi operators. ZICA will dost likely avoid this fate, even for its diesel variant, seems to be the verdict.

A truly unique feature about ZICA is ‘multi (its actually twin) driving mode’. Car gives you two modes to drive- City and Eco. City, when you have to zip.. zap.. zoom.. in the city traffic— halting and moving very often. Eco modes comes into play when you are more on a steady, long drive and where you can save the precious fuel. So when actually we were driving on streets of South Goa, we could feel the difference. City mode gives you quick pick-up and accelerator push. On Eco mode you might feel the car running a bit heavy, but that is actually because of the parameters fixed in the car for the Eco mode. Hence, for those who love to value their vehicles on fuel-efficiency, it is indeed a welcome feature.

But that’s not the only thing that TATA Motors have done with ZICA to increase the fuel efficiency. Its Revotorq (Revotron for the Petrol variant) engine has got light and efficient all-aluminium construction. It also comes with a variable intake cam timing (it is process of altering the timing of a valve lift event) for superior performance and lower emissions. This overall lowers the maintenance cost of the engine.

Well, you can always just look to your metre screen on the dashboard to check the fuel economy (average fuel consumption and instantaneous fuel consumption) or the mode you are driving in. Changing the mode is just as easy as switching on a button. There is also a gear shift indicator on the dashboard to remind you on which gear are you driving in. The multi-information display on the instrument panel also estimates the distance you can travel before your tank goes dry. Thus you can plan when to fill. Nice one for the longer drives.

ZICA also comes with some best in class safety features which include dual front airbags and corner stability control on emergency braking. For an unlikely and unfortunate situation of crash ZICA has energy absorbing body structure for better safety. While on test drive, we never had an emergency braking situation, but the accelerating and braking both were pretty smooth. It was helped with EPAS (power steering) with Active Return Function which ensures 95% return ability. That means- after a sharp turn, steering returns almost to its normal position quickly and effortlessly. And we felt so in many of the u-turns that we had to take in course of our test-drive. For a comfortable drive and superior handling it also has a Advanced Dual Path Suspension.

As TATA says, ZICA comes with a new design language capable enough of making a style statement in modern India. It has been crafted with utmost precision for a premium feel.

ZICA will have a hell lot of competitors in the segment of hatchbacks in 4.5 Lacs to 6.00 Lacs Rs price range, right from Swift to Brio to Elite i20 to Figo to Etios Liva to Polo to Grand i10 and much more. It will be surely a tough drive for TATA Motors. But with a champion brand ambassador (no guesses for Lionel Messi), new multifaceted TATA emblem and a signature hexagon grill ZICA seems to have a lot in its ammunition to hold them considerably.