Interiors & Features
Get inside the car and you’ll know why I called the Indica Vista a major departure from the old Indica’s design. The Vista’s interior provides an insight as to where Tata is heading in terms of design, quality of materials and the fit and finish. While the early models of the Vista did present some panel gaps, loose electrical housings and vibrating panels, the new Vista Safire 90 has worked well towards ironing out these shortcomings. Apart from the better quality of materials and better fit and finish, the new Vista variant also comes with Black and Beige interiors. While most believe that an all-Beige interior looks plush and up-market, the Black and Beige has its own advantages. The all-Beige interiors of the earlier Vistas were known to create bright reflections on the windscreen, which in turn would hamper visibility during daytime driving. The Black upper surface of the new dashboard however, addresses this issue to a large extent.
Apart from the new dash, there isn’t much difference in the equipment level of the Vista Safire 90. In fact this variant gets all goodies that recently debuted on the ‘Indica Vista Drivetech4’. Like the Blue5 infotainment system for example, lumber support for the front seats, four spoke steering wheel, height adjustment for the driver seat etc. The seats are large and comfortable, no doubt. The addition of lumber support further adds to the comfort levels when you decide to travel long distances. The rear seats offer decent legroom and as I mentioned earlier, the large windows impart an airy feel to the rear bench passengers as well. The rear windshield however, could have been designed better.
The roof spoiler and brake lamp housing at the top and the wiper housing at the bottom leave a very small window for the rear view mirror to reflect. Furthermore, the RVM itself is mounted a tad higher which makes it even more difficult to get a wide enough view of the road behind you. Things get even worse when you increase the height of the driver’s seat! But the height adjustment on the large enough driver seat and the tilt adjustment for the steering wheel is a combination that will allow drivers of most sizes to fit comfortably inside the new Vista. It even irons out the driving judgment issues that many people associated with the earlier iterations of the Vista.
Fortunately, there aren’t any steering mounted audio or phone controls. I say ‘fortunately’ because the way the four spoke steering is designed, inclusion of audio or phone control switches would have led to their unintentional operation every now and then. We experienced the same issue when we tested the Aria as well. Every time we would turn the steering right, we would change the audio track / radio station and on turning left a woman would say “No phone present” in her not-so-seductive voice. No such worries on the new Vista though.
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