We have all heard the idiom “beauty is only skin deep” multiple times in our lives. It is also a classic put-down of an attractive person or product. Which brings me to the new Tata Sierra, which I drove around Chandigarh and Mohali a few days ago. In my opinion, it is the most attractive C-segment SUV entering the market right now.
Not only that, Tata Motors has revealed some stunning colours for the car and given them very Indian names, such as Andaman Adventure (Yellow), Bengal Rouge (Red) and a lovely greenish-purplish dual-tone depending on the light’s reflection, called Munnar Mist. The sheer number of people in the ‘Tri-City’ area who stopped me and others on the media drive to enquire about the car was unusually large. Tata Motors is using the tagline ‘The Legend Reborn’, and they have tried to hark back to the old design with small things, like the ‘kink’ on the B-Pillar and the wraparound glass feel at the rear.
Tata has always taken product design very seriously, ever since the old-school Indica hatchback and also the ‘micro car’ Nano, because the late, great Ratan Tata took aesthetics very seriously. He would have been very proud that the Sierra won the Red Dot Global Industrial Design Award.
Entering a competitive market
So the new Sierra stands out in terms of design, and honestly, it has to stand out in an extremely crowded market. There are more than 30 vehicles in the C-segment SUV (CSUV) market right now. Maruti-Suzuki recently launched the Victoris, Kia is launching the second-generation Seltos in a couple of days, and Renault is reintroducing the Duster on Republic Day next month. And then there is the Hyundai Creta, which continues to dominate, selling between 15,000 to 20,000 units every month.
But Tata Motors—which is competing with Mahindra for second spot in the sales chart saw its post-COVID growth turbocharged by the success of products like the Harrier, Nexon and Punch —has already seen a flop of sorts with the last CSUV they launched, the Tata Curvv. That was also a great design, although I suspect most Indian car buyers didn’t take to the rounded ‘coupe SUV’ shape and prefer their SUVs to be ‘boxy’ with sharp edges, which the Sierra definitely is.
So is the Tata Sierra all about the design and nothing about the performance? Well, not really. I drove a Bengal Rogue Sierra with the new Hyperion 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine. This engine churns out a class-leading 170PS of power. That said, these small turbo engines do take a little bit of time to get going because of something called ‘turbo lag’. A turbocharger works by using some of the exhaust gases from the engine to force more air inside the combustion chamber, and that takes some time to get going.
So while the new Hyperion engine has decent mid-range grunt, it takes a little bit of time to get used to it. While it is more powerful than other engines in this segment, its drivability isn’t my favourite. However, people do get influenced by the headline number, and I’m sure that will make people gravitate to the Sierra initially.
That said, unless you really are a performance junkie and want the power of a turbocharged engine, I would choose the other options, the diesel, which I also drove briefly, which felt punchy and the new naturally aspirated 1.5-litre petrol engine, which has a respectable power output of 120PS. The latter is almost certain to make up a bulk of sales for Tata Motors, because another reality with turbocharged petrol engines is that while they’re great for mile-munching highway drives, they’re really not that economical in cities.
However, if you are a performance junkie, you would like to know how the ride quality is and how the car manoeuvres around corners. The former is pretty comfortable, not too stiff nor too soft, but there was a palpable body roll around the corners. Not uncomfortable for me as a driver and not unexpected in an SUV, but it did lead to my phone flying off the wireless charger. But on the road between Chandigarh and Baddi, I did get to throw the Sierra into some corners, and I would say that if you do want to take it and have some fun every so often, it is a rewarding drive. Just don’t keep anything loose inside the cabin, although there is enough ‘secure’ storage also.
And it is extremely quiet inside the cabin, though. And it is a very nice cabin indeed, the soft touch of the dashboard and the quality of materials used give the Sierra a very premium feeling inside. And the vast amount of glass area on the Sierra, with the large panoramic sunroof, makes it feel bright and airy, something added to by the light-coloured interiors. That said, I do not know how white upholstery will hold up in Indian conditions.
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Sierra looks like a winner
Now let’s talk about the most discussed aspect of this new Sierra. The edge-to-edge triple screen on the front. While this isn’t new in India, Mahindra offers a similar set-up on the XEV 9e and 9s. The third screen allows the front passenger to entertain themselves, but as a driver, that can be distracting.
The Sierra tries to solve that by allowing the passenger to connect Bluetooth headphones. I didn’t run the screen on the vehicles that I drove, and Tata is offering a variant with a dual-screen set-up that has a far more useful feature, a heads-up display.
My comment on the three-screen set-up, which is also on some Mercedes-Benz vehicles, is about the explanation that the companies give—it allows passengers to have their own entertainment. But for me at least, and call me old school here, long drives with the family are all about time together. A car cabin is one of the few places that we spend time together. I genuinely like the time I spend with my son when I drop or pick him up from school. But if he is lost to a screen (ok, that could happen with a phone or tablet as well), I would prefer that a car didn’t have the choice.
So if I were to buy a CSUV in the next few months, would I choose the Sierra? It definitely turns heads and looks really nice. Tata has done a fantastic job reimagining the first-ever passenger car that they ever made, both inside and outside. But, despite their sales success of the past half-decade, quality concerns abound on automotive forums online, even for their latest products. There is a wariness in recommending Tata products that even I have, having suffered at the hands of unreliable old Indicas, to issues I have faced on the new-generation Curvv. I’m sure Tata Motors will be able to address that, but on the face of it, the Sierra looks like a winner.
Kushan Mitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. He tweets @kushanmitra. Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)