Don't Hesitate to Buy a 4.4-meter Car
I’ve been been driving the Ritz, a 4-meter-long hatchback, since 2013. This year, I’ve driven many 4.4-meter cars: the Creta and Seltos crossovers for a fortnight each, and many other cars for a couple of hours each, covering sedans, MPVs, and SUVs.
4.4-meter cars are much more spacious — both the front and rear passengers can comfortably outstretch their legs, unlike the Ritz where the front passengers, in order to outstretch their legs, have to move their seats all the way back, leaving little legroom in the rear seat, to the extent where it’s no longer suitable for adults.
The Ritz also has less boot space — when I tried to drop off two people at the airport for a 6-month trip, I couldn’t fit them both along with their luggage. One person had to take a taxi.
For these reasons, the world has shifted to 4.4-meter cars. They’re the default nowadays. Nobody wants 4-meter cars. India is the only country where 4-meter cars are widely sold, thanks to our misguided tax laws1.
On the other hand, cars longer than 4.4-meter are unwieldy and should be considered only if you need three rows or tons of cargo space:
4.4 is the sweet spot.
I was told that 4.4-meter cars are not suitable for the city, and that they’re slower and more stressful to drive. Neither were true. A 4.4-meter car is as good as a small car even in rush hour Bangalore traffic: I didn’t take any longer to reach my office driving all the way across the city from C.V.Raman Nagar to Jayanagar. It was no more stressful than the Ritz. I could navigate tiny roads as well as the Ritz.
Only when parking it is there a difference: when parking in my apartment, I have to slow to a crawl to avoid hitting the pillars, and be vigilant. Even then, the gap between the car and the pillar is tiny. When parking on the road, I sometimes have to rock the car back and forth to fit into a tiny parking area. When I open the door, it opens into the traffic, adding risk, unlike the Ritz, where I’m off the side of the road when I exit the road. This is because longer cars are typically wider. But parking is a small part of driving.
So don’t hesitate to buy a 4.4-meter car thinking it will somehow be unsuitable for city driving, that you’ll be slower to reach your destination or that the drive will be more stressful.
Replace taxation on cars with congestion pricing for non-EVs, with the price going up and down dynamically based on congestion, to ensure that traffic never slows to cycling speed.
If cars must be taxed, they should be taxed based on how much they pollute, not how long they are.