Tata Punch Camo - Feature Loaded But Lacks Performance | Faisal Khan

This is Tata Motors' top selling car and as per me, Tata Motors' best car on sale currently, but wait, how's that even possible considering Tata Motors has cars costing thrice as much like the Harrier and Safari, which are a lot more feature-loaded. Well, that seems to be the problem because this car is so simple with lesser touch panels, lesser electronics, it is more reliable and it also has a visual identity of its own. This is the Tata Punch, this is the Tata Punch Camo Edition, which is priced at Rs 12.11 lakhs on RoadMumbai. This is the key of the vehicle, unlock the car, lock the car, this is for the lights, you can turn them on, it has a follow me home function and this is to open the boot of the vehicle, the key is actually quite premium for the size of the car and straight away, let's open the engine bay, the only disappointing part of this vehicle being the engine, which doesn't have any sort of a punch, oh my god, yeah, that shut very fast. So, the engine bay does not have any cover only, which is a bit of a problem and the refinement is not there at all. So, I'm going to open the engine again because I was not expecting the engine bay to shut, this hood shut very fast and it is also very heavy, so it could have had a nice engine cover and washer fluid goes in right there, I don't know why it has opened, I think because of the vibration, there's insulation here, obviously you can put a bigger engine, Tata Motors should have put their diesel engine here, would have really pushed the sales of this car forward but this segment is like very small in terms of diesel, this being the Camo Edition has this seaweed green colour and it's a limited edition version, which by the way, has a different green compared to the earlier foliage green and first things first, I need to solve the puzzle, which is take this, yeah, can you see the design of this and put it right here, yeah, that fits in there, they've actually put this open tri-arrow treatment for the horn, so that it is louder, a lot of tri-arrow treatments almost everywhere in this car, this is not painted, so body coloured, which gives it the ruggedness yet saves painting cost as well, that is the towing hook, fog lamps are there in this vehicle and obviously, the split light treatment, this is the projector setup, this is actually for the high beam, the low beam is projector here and this is very much active, yeah, active aero vents inside, so that air flows for better aerodynamic efficiency, which doesn't work because the car doesn't go high speed at all, LED DRL, which is the only LED element here, you get this chrome running throughout, the Tata logo here, gloss finishing, this is actually halogen, the indicator is a big fat bulb, which I can see right now, which is a bit disappointing, the engine is loud, you can hear it and there is a rail sensor as well, so this car is decently feature loaded, it has the camo badging here because this is the camo edition and the tyre size happens to be 195 60 16, they've actually darkened the alloy wheels but still, the alloy wheels look small on this car because of the way it has been designed, squared wheel arches, this body cladding is running throughout and again, this side part is not painted, which obviously has been done to give it the rugged appeal and obviously, save on cost as well, in terms of the length, it is slightly more than 3.8 metres, the wheelbase is slightly more than 2.4 metres and the ground clearance is 190 mm, it has a water weighting capacity of 370 mm, which is actually quite impressive, you get a request sensor here, not on the other side, this car has gloss black finishing on the outside rear view mirrors, a wide coloured roof, so yes, the design actually looks quite nice, especially this paint scheme and you get a roof rail, I mean the roof rails are obviously not functional, that is a shark fin antenna, which is again finished in gloss black, it gets a rear drum, no rear disc here and the rear design is actually having the same tri-arrow treatment, in fact, it says Tata here on the inside and this is LED, everything else is halogen here, you get two parking sensors at the rear, get a rear wiper washer, you get the rhino as an easter egg, parking camera, says punch right here, lot of tri-arrow treatment and that is the exhaust, which is sort of hidden underneath, plastic, plastic, plastic, a lot of plastic here, high mounted stop lamp, straight away, let's open the boot, which I think is 366 litres, the problem is the loading lip is very high here and the spare wheel is obviously not an alloy, in fact, it is smaller size at 185 70 15, what? 185 70 15, yeah, that's fine, spare wheel is actually having a steel rim here and that is the tool kit, that is jack, that is a warning triangle and you have a strap here, just for some added practicality, it says one kg, another kg can be taken here and I can push the seat ahead because it's a single piece recline, you obviously get a parcel shelf and Tata Motors obviously goes ahead and puts a lot of stickers on its car, so it says vocal for local, it's saying smart key, not detected, fuel goes in right here, which has to be opened from the inside, hidden door handles, very much like the Altroz, another feature like the Altroz is the 90 degree opening door, because this is based on the Alpha Arc, so you can put this seat down, one piece recline here, in order to improve the practicality of the vehicle, so you can carry a lot more stuff, this being the camo edition actually has camo graphics here and in terms of space, well, it is not very spacious, but you know what, there's good amount of space here in the footwell, which means you can rest your foot here completely, under the support is not bad, headroom seems to be decent enough and legroom also is adequate enough, rear AC vents have been added recently, USB-A charging socket, this is not scooped out, you get a magazine holder, no height adjustable seatbelts, no side airbags here, you get a handle to hold on to along with a hook as well, so yeah, it's decently spacious, but the cabin is like really narrow and centre passenger does not get a head only, the floor is flat, but centre passenger is not welcome because of the narrow cabin, you get a centre armrest with no cup holders here, which is a bit disappointing and this white finishing here will definitely get dirty, but notice the tri-arrow pattern here, yes, that has been done as well, but the doors open really wide and the door pockets are massive as well, so yeah, that is quite practical, the dashboard also looks quite nice here because it seems quite rugged, let's get to the front and let me shut the door with a lot of enthusiasm, yeah, it kind of feels quite rugged, this car, let me quickly get into the front, request also should have been given on the other side as well, this car is very horny, it keeps ringing all the time, there's a hook here so that you can tie your sabzi, the glovebox is also massive, in fact, there's a tray on the top, there's a light here, there's a cooling function and again, the Rhino easter egg has been given there too, again, the front seats get the camo treatment here and the doors open so wide, now it's absolutely crazy how wide the doors open, some information has been given right here and let me shut this and come to the front of the car, now I feel this car is way better than the Nexon, how is that even possible considering the Nexon is obviously bigger, the Nexon has more space, but this car has been designed grounds up, which means, unlike the Nexon which has ergonomic issues, this car does not, the control for the outside rear view mirrors has been given here, which is easier to use, in the Nexon, it is right here because the Nexon obviously is dating back all the way to the Indica in terms of whatever stuff has been designed, this is all fresh, which makes it easier here, there is no touch panel here for the climate control air conditioning, unlike the Nexon, which means, there is no problem here and the steering wheel does not have a pad right here, which again is a better thing, unlike the Nexon, which has this weird pad with the Tata logo, which eliminates, which is not aligned and the horn is a bit difficult to operate, obviously, the Nexon gets a full digital screen, this is also fully digital screen, but the screen is slightly better because less things to go wrong with, but finally, we have a bigger screen here, a 10.25 inch unit, before that, let me show you, there is actually an umbrella holder here in the front door, which is a good thing and again, the door opens super duper wide, it's absolutely crazy, why do you need the doors to open so wide, it's actually risky in the city because when you open the door this wide, now, you might hit someone around and all the instructions of how you have to drive an AMT gearbox car, but no instructions can help you because the AMT is very laggy, you get a proper dead pedal right there, tyre pressure indicator has been given, I mean, it is the recommendation, not the indicator because it does have a tyre pressure monitor, you have got a few buttons here, this thing has been added to lock and unlock the vehicle, this is to change into the eco drive mode, this is for the front fog lamps and for the manual, it also has a stop start system, this is the engine start button and I like the fact that the footwell is actually wide enough, there's some storage space here, but this is not concealed, which means, if you put stuff, it can be seen and it can fall down as well, now, the steering is something, which I really like here because the newer Tata Motors steering, I don't like and yes, the seat I'm sitting on, gets the height adjust function too, I have to like really stretch to close the doors, if I open it completely, yeah, they open very, very, very wide, no auto dimming mirror here, what's wrong, there is no mirror here, there's just a strap, but with Fastag, I don't need to keep my toilet seats there at all, there's a mirror here, obviously, gets a six speaker system, but tweeters there, the audio system is actually quite nice and the steering wheel is adjustable for height only, yeah, it's not adjustable for reach, buttons for the cruise control system, buttons to operate this particular screen, not really, it's for the audio system actually and the horn is also easy to press from the corners or from the centre to leather wrapping here, leather wrapping here as well and car actually feels nice because the interior looks definitely awesome, this white treatment in the centre and obviously, hard plastics are there, you would expect that at this price point, lights here on the top and it also gets a sunroof now, which is amazing, so that's another new addition in this car, so few additions have been added for this particular model, which is obviously a sunroof, which is not very big, yeah, it is actually Chintominto sunroof, it also gets a wireless charging fan, another new feature, a USB-C charging socket with 45 watt output, which is fast charging, 12 volt was not written earlier here, but now it has been added and this thing has its auto close mechanism, so another feature which has been added, so they have made certain changes to the car to make it much better and physical AC controls, but the biggest change is this screen, this is a 10.25 inch screen, which is really slick to operate, it has got plenty of information obviously, but there's not much to play around with, first and foremost, you can get into the climate control menu from here or you can operate it from here as well, the AC is a chiller, it works fantastically well, there it is, full blast and obviously it has got, let me press this button, express cooling turned on, windows may roll down, so the window rolled down because I turned on express cooling, let me turn off express cooling, express cooling turned off, please roll up windows if down, I have to roll up the window myself, so I just press the button here, it's a one-touch, is it a one-touch? No, it's not going one-touch, one-touch is down for sure, but is it one-touch up? Yeah, it is one-touch up as well, you have to keep it pressed then, only it works, illumination only for the driver's side again, switchgear seems a bit dated here and this thing is a bit on the higher side, it should have been a little lower, this should be the position when the indicator is activated, now when activated, it's even further ahead, automatic headlights, automatic wipers, let's turn off the air conditioning, yeah, because making quite a lot of sound, hazard light button here in the centre, now this screen is very slick to operate, it has got Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, both of which actually work wirelessly, which is cool, let's get into the park assist, that is actually the reverse parking camera and then I can go for the full view as well, quality of the camera is decent, I can also zoom if I want, turn on and off the volume of this particular park assist system and that's about it, it has obviously got voice assistant, which shouts very loudly if I have the key outside the car, so that's something you need to watch out for, otherwise it's actually a very slick screen, but this is not fully digital, earlier they had a different kind of a cluster which they changed, now obviously a lot of stuff has been shared with the Altroz obviously, when you turn on the car, it does this full swipe up thingy, only thing is the tachometer now, that's not very visible, so that's a bit disappointing there and it is like black and white, so I have to go through all the multi-information display by pressing this button, which is not the most convenient to operate, it could have been done better, it has got twin cupholders here, which the Nexon does not get, so again better than the Nexon here, because the Nexon gets it in the glove box, which is like really badly placed and this thing slides ahead and behind, there's some storage space here, but again the storage is chin to min to, so I wouldn't say that it has much storage space inside here, but twin cupholders, what a revolution, earlier I think the dry mode selector was here, because you can see the dummy, but they have shifted it right there, so they've made a lot of changes after customer feedback to make this car more ergonomically sorted, the roof liner is not knitted, so it feels a bit cheap and again, it seems that it can fall off, it won't, but if you push it, it does move around quite a lot, like look at the amount of play here, which isn't that cool, this car obviously gets the cornering light function as well, Harman sourced audio system, which has a tweeter here, but what is this, is this a tweeter as well, because they're on the rear doors as well, I don't think a car can have six tweeters, at least not a budget car, that's a bit confusing, but I think it has a six speaker system, let's quickly get in here, again there's not much to play around with, but we can get into the settings and this seems a bit premium to me, let's get into driver assistance, it's just for the parking assist system, it's not having any ADAS function and at this price, expecting ADAS would be so criminal, anyways, let's start driving right away, alright, let's start driving, before that let me show you a puddle lamp, which is right here under the door, which is a nice thing and it shuts with a proper thud, let's turn on the car, this car has done just 500 kilometers, so it's absolutely brand new, air conditioning off, drive modes are useless here, we come into drive, handbrake down, Apple CarPlay has been turned on automatically, because I think my phone has the Wi-Fi enabled right now and off we go, this car is really very sluggish, extremely sluggish, but before we come to the performance and before I turn on my specialist timing gear, let me tell you, it makes no sense to not have an auto dimming mirror, but have a sunroof, so the priorities of Indian customers, completely wrong, more than priorities, I think brands are like, sunroof is the first thing we should give you, rest you can forget about, but first things first, let me highlight the best thing about this car, which is the ride quality, this suspension is beautifully tuned here, it takes everything in its stride, you see that big fat bump, I will just go at speed, no problem, it manages that, so even though this is a small car, it doesn't feel like a small car in that regard, because it feels like a much bigger and mature car in terms of its ride quality, because it's just amazing, the way this car rides, it's so good over the worst of roads, okay, something broke right now, but yeah, I was praising the car endlessly and the car's like, no, no, I don't want to praise it this much, the ride is amazing, actually, very good ride quality and that's one of the reasons why Tata Motors cars are so good, it's purely because of the ride quality, way better than Maruti Suzuki in terms of the ride and, please release parking brake, oh no, handbrake turn, why are you telling me to release the parking brake, that makes no sense, let me do my thing, okay let's go. So let's try and do that again, maybe ahead and yeah I am just so disappointed with the AMT box because I have to actually manipulate the throttle input to make sure that the gears are changing because the gears don't change only, it will stay in one gear and most of the time it's such a confused gearbox, it's one of the worst automatic gearbox I have experienced, this AMT is just not good enough, yes lady I will release all the brakes, let me do my thing. So the thing is very clear here, the punch is made for first time car buyers and that's the reason it shares a lot with first time car buyer cars like the Tiago, the Tigor and the Altroz as well, in fact the Altroz is having similar parts, lot of stuff being shared with the Altroz including the chassis as well but the biggest differentiator here is the ground clearance and this AMT also has something known as a traction pro mode or something of that sort, so if you encounter a rough patch and you get stuck, it will give you a prompt on the cluster and then you press the brake and accelerator and activate it and then it will get you out of sticky situation, it works like a BLD, it will apply brakes to the wheel with less traction thereby channeling power more to the wheel with more traction and then getting you out of sticky situation, I have used that earlier, it works brilliantly well, so yeah that's actually a good thing and I think the EV has a slightly higher ground clearance but the EV is a different world all together and now it's the time for the brake test which means let me keep my phone here, let's come to speed, it takes time to come to speed and now the brake test, yeah the brakes are not good, not impressed at all by the braking performance of this car, which is surprising because the car is actually light, 1035 kgs is the weight of the vehicle and that's the reason why this 1.2 litre three cylinder engine doesn't feel as bad as it feels in the Nexon, even though the Nexon is turbocharged with more power and torque, the Nexon is actually heavier, just 1035 kgs is the weight which is like really less, in fact this is 305 kgs lesser when compared to the EV version but EV has a lot of torque, so EV is a different world all together, we'll talk about the Punch EV in a bit because there's a lot of important stuff I need to talk about comparing both the cars, so the Nexon is actually heavier and even though it has more power and torque, the problem with the Nexon is that it's in a price range or a segment where people do not forgive bad performance or mediocre performance, here since it's an entry level car, first time car buyers don't really care much about performance and they're like, okay chalo, gets the job done, the problem here with the AMT one is that it revs 600 rpm lesser, so redline comes in around 5300-5400 rpm, in the manual, it goes all the way to 6000 rpm, so Tata Motors really needs to change the engine on this car, we need a turbo here, since the Altroz got the i-Turbo, this one also deserves a turbocharged engine because this engine is quite lacklustre, just 86 horsepower and 113 Nm of torque which is slow, which actually reminds me to turn on my specialist timing gear because we're going to time the car to see how fast it goes from 0-100 kmph, okay, I've hit a signal here. Okay, off we go, one of the USPs of this car is safety, 5-star rating from Global NCAP which is a good thing and that's one of the major reasons why Tata Motors is selling such good numbers because of the safety record which they've managed to create quite well here, so it obviously gets ISOFIX child seat mount, hazards are on because we're going to come to a halt here and it's time to launch this car to test the 0-100 kmph acceleration, hazard lights off, nothing to do and off we go. It jhoolos every time a shift happens, this AMT box actually comes from Mareli, Mareli, Magneti Mareli, I think the gearbox is Mareli because it is so slow with shifts, it's so confused, it doesn't even know what it's doing, it's quite lethargic and it is not good at all, 17.7 seconds to go from 0-100 kmph which is actually slower than the manual and it's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very slow, what is this, this is a very slow car. In fact, this car does not even want you to launch it, so if I do left foot on the brake, right foot on the accelerator, it says don't press brake and accelerator together, so I'm just trying to launch it and off we go, come on. Yeah, it jhoolos every time, it like swings up and down, there's this head nod, there's this delay between shifts, this AMT box is super, duper, duper, duper, duper, duper confused yeah, not impressed at all by this gearbox because it is super, duper slow, again 17.5 seconds, so accurate numbers, car is very slow, extremely slow but first time car buyers are like, we'll still forgive that because we want something which is safe, which this car is, global NCAP 5-star rating, easy to drive, steering is light and obviously it feels quite robust as well. This car is grooving on its own, driver rear view monitor I've turned on right now, the handling is actually good, the only thing is the engine doesn't have the punch and that's kind of weird, the car's name is Punch but the engine does not have the punch, because of which this car is not that fun to drive because if it had more performance now, the underpinnings are just amazing, it can really make you smile because the handling is actually good, steering is good as well, it weighs up decently well at speed, it's responsive, doesn't feel hairy at all, some slack in the centre position but yes, this is actually a very well calibrated steering wheel here, this is underpinned by the Alpha Arc which is actually agile, light, flexible and advanced and because of which you have 90-degree opening doors shared with the Altroz and that's the reason why it is far better than the Nexon because this platform is new, which means ergonomically this car is more sorted when compared to the Nexon, the Nexon has a lot of ergonomic issues because the updates to the Nexon have been over the years and everything dates back to the Indica there, however, this is new and because of which obviously things seem a lot better here to me personally speaking, anyways, let's do the wiper test quickly, out on the highway, this car is not the best but in the city, on part throttle inputs, it's good enough, the problem is when you go full throttle now, this car just doesn't have the grunt and becomes very vocal past 4000 RPM, yeah, it's quite noisy as well, there's the 3-cylinder uneasiness, the 3-cylinder thrum and the vibrations are also present here, although Tata Motors has tried to contain it to a certain extent but only if you rev it hard and fast now, it will make those vibrations but you have to rev it hard and fast otherwise the car does not move, it simply does not move at all and there is also a CNG version of this car with 72 horsepower and 103 Newton meters of torque, that will be way more efficient but much more sluggish as well, Tata Motors really needs to update the engine in the punch so that the car can finally have some punch at least but the other problem with the AMT box is that it does not have any hill hold function which means that if you're on a slope, you have to manually apply the brakes otherwise the car will start rolling ahead or behind depending on the angle of the slope, so that again is a bit of a problem here and engine braking is also very poor, obviously I've got manual control of things, I put it into manual mode here and now I am going to see does it hold on to a gear, no, it does not hold on to a gear, it goes almost till 6000 RPM otherwise it doesn't touch 6000 RPM, so that's the difference which manual mode actually makes here, which actually makes me wonder why have not Tata Motors updated this car in line with the EV version because the EV version obviously has a lot more features but it's a lot more expensive as well, firstly the EV version doesn't have a visual identity of its own, it looks like a Nexon but if you are having a smaller car which looks like a bigger car, it's a win-win for the person who bought the smaller car, however if you have a bigger car and the smaller car looks similar to the bigger car, it is not a win-win situation for the bigger car, to put into perspective if you have an S-Class and a C-Class looks similar to the S-Class, it's easier for C-Class buyers to be like, yes, our car looks like the S-Class but for the S-Class buyer it's like, what, my car looks like a C-Class, you get the drift, right, so this family design language doesn't work for me, anyways the EV has a different front end, looks very similar at the rear but the EV, the Punch EV has a 10.25 inch instrument cluster to start with, it gets sequential indicators, it gets C60 degree parking camera, it gets a blind view monitor, it gets ventilated seats as well and it gets the Arcade.EV app too, it gets an air purifier with AQM monitor too, it gets a sport drive mode, this car does not have a sport drive mode because this car does not have sporty performance so Tata Motors has been honest there by giving this Eco and City drive modes, that's it and when obviously you change the drive mode, it's going to make sound, Eco drive mode is even more sluggish, it will not shift into Eco when I'm in manual mode, now we are in Eco mode, it has this jewel-themed gear selector as well and lot of other important bits are there in the Punch.EV but the biggest one for me personally speaking is an auto-dimming IRVM and that car also gets an electric parking brake with auto hold function and the big one, it gets six airbags, this car has only two airbags, that car has got six airbags, so I really don't understand why six airbags have not been offered in this particular car, so that's a bit of a miss here which I honestly feel because come on, they can bring both the cars in line offering the same features because both of them are called Punch, but if the engine is so lethargic then why is this car selling in such good numbers, top selling car right in India, at one point it was selling the most but then the crater obviously overtook it because people were horny, honky, the people like a car which they can honk like crazy, jokes aside, the reason for this good sales of this car is not the engine, it is because 47% of the buyers are opting for either the CNG or for the EV because of the efficiency, so yeah, that is one of the major reasons why the Punch.EV is selling well and this car competes with the obviously, it will compete with which car, I keep forgetting, the Maruti Ignis because everybody has forgotten the Ignis, so I also forgot, so you can't blame me on that, let me get into the city drive mode activated, not having a sport drive mode is actually very baffling, I don't understand the reason why they don't have a sport drive mode because this car definitely needs a sport mode because it doesn't have sporty performance but the engine doesn't have anything to give because this is a non-turbo engine, it's a naturally aspirated engine, it just feels super duper duper duper lethargic, anyways, this car sells around 2,000 to 3,000 units more than the Nexon, obviously, because of the pricing and compared to the Nexon, it offers similar practicality as well, the Nexon is a slightly bigger car, so if you want more space, you'll opt for the Nexon, obviously, now in April, it managed to sell 19,000 units which is absolutely crazy and there are 33 variants on offer, 33 variants is a lot of variants, how do I get a downshift, yeah, the gearbox is all over the place and around the corners, there's obviously body roll but this car is not bad at all in terms of the handling, it's quite impressive the way the underpinnings have been done so robustly well here but with the EV version now, they have a slightly better ride because forget all this, I don't want to get in the EV because I still feel paying 3 lakhs more for the EV is a lot, the top-end variant difference is around Rs 3 lakhs which is quite a lot of price difference and 33 variants for this car, there are actually four trims, there's the pure, there's the adventure, there's the accomplished and there's the creative, this particular one is priced at Rs 12.11 lakhs on road Mumbai and the Panji EV is priced at Rs 15.18 lakhs for the top-end variant which is like 3.07 lakhs more, might as well get the Nexon.EV because slight more money, bigger car and all those things, camo edition is also available in 10 variants, so four trims, 10 variants of the camo edition and because this is also available in manual, automatic and obviously CNG because Tata Motors for everything will have a CNG, automatically they charge you 84,000 more which is okay but considering the gearbox is so sluggish, you're better off with the manual and if you're a first time car buyer, it is better to learn on a manual than on an automatic, 38,000 more for the camo edition which is decent money considering the changes aren't that drastic, so it's just that the limited edition thing is going to win you over because they launched the camo edition a couple of years back and then they discontinued it, so again they might discontinue this as well, the range starts at Rs. 7.25 lakhs for the punch which is one of the major reasons why it sells so well because of the attractive pricing and now it is the time to do the 0-100 kmph run in eco-drive mode to see how fast this car is or rather how slow this car is, steering actually centres which is a good thing because most of the Suzuki car's steering just don't centre here, look at it, it centres very fast so that's actually a good thing but the swinging effect is just way too much and the suspension is actually quite silent here, so a lot of positive bits, only thing is if they put the turbo engine which again is not the best, it will definitely improve the performance of this car, it will increase the price as well but it is money worth spent for sure, let customers decide if they're okay with spending more money for more performance with the turbo engine, anyways let's get into economy drive mode activated, I was saying efficiency, eco, whatever it's the same thing, left foot on the brake, right foot on the accelerator and off we go, come on! Efficiency drive mode or eco drive mode makes it an aim to make sure that you never reach any place on time because it's so slow, it's so slow, it's so slow, I think it's going to do 0-100 kmph in more than 20 seconds is what I reckon, there's a lot of speedo error is another thing I'm noticing right now which is not such a good thing because then it falsifies the mileage for you, 22.37 seconds to go from 0-100 kmph and on that disappointment it's time to end, thank you so much for watching, if you like this video make sure to give it a thumbs up, that's a like button and also subscribe to the channel, I'll keep rapping, you keep shouting the video bye, I mean keep liking the video.