Tata Indica Vista Safire 90 Road Test Review

Design

Since we have never posted a roadtest of any of the previous iterations of the Indica Vista, I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about the ‘Vista’ in general too, instead of just highlighting the newness of the 90HP variant. Coming back to the design, the Indica Vista has been a major departure from the original Indica. It still has the familiarly long vertically stacked taillights at the back and the smiley grille up front that still tells you it’s an Indica. But the Vista has grown larger over its predecessor and also tends to look a tad European in its design approach. The swept back headlights, which are now becoming a signature design for the current crop of Tata vehicles, give the Vista a modern and aggressive look. The smiley grille doesn’t get any chrome garnish (yet) apart from the chromed ‘T’ logo in the centre but doesn’t feel down-market in any way.

The large silhouette of the Indica Vista makes its spacious interiors evident in the first glance itself. The large windows add an airy feel to the passenger space and in a way, explains why the Indica line-up has been so popular amongst families and fleet operators for over a decade now. When seen from the side profile, the wheels of the Indica Vista look slightly undernourished and small against the car’s large wheel wells. Speaking of the wheels, this 90HP variant gets the same alloys that Tata shod the ‘Indica Vista Anniversary Edition’ with. While they looked decent on the AE’s white-body-black-roof scheme, they look like a cheap aftermarket add-on on the other colours like Red, Blue, Grey etc. Such perceptions though, change from person to person. The Vista continues with the Indica’s tradition and places the variant monogram (Aura+ in this case) above the wheel arches. However, the side mounted turn blinkers which shared space with the variant monograms on the old Indica, now move to the bottom corner of the front windows and below the ORVMs. While this looks good from a designer’s point of view, it doesn’t serve the purpose of a side mounted turn blinker all that well.

At the back of the car, the Vista flaunts a flat tailgate with a couple of straight creases that try to fill up the emptiness of the boot lid. On either sides of the boot lid, are the model name (Indica Vista) and engine variant (Safire / Quardrajet) monograms. The new variant we tested gets the ‘Safire’ monogram with a ‘90’ tag above it, like the one seen on the similar engine-d Indigo Manza. Overall the tailgate is drab and I don’t particularly like the design of the rear windshield – more on that later…

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