Cars...

As I mentioned here, we are in the market to buy a new car. The car industry is booming out here and the abundance of choices are really confusing for a new customer.

Four important criteria for us :

1. Mid-size vs Sedan. A sedan is the equivalent of a VW Jetta, Honda City, Hyundai Verna vs a mid-size which is Hyundai I20, VW Polo etc. A mid-size has lesser boot space and lesser leg room in the back-seats. 
2. Petrol vs Diesel - everyone recommends a diesel engine now-a-days, with the petrol prices increasing. 
3. Automatic vs Manual - automatic is just making inroads in India and my guess-estimate is that less 10% of the vehicles are automatic.
4. New vs Second-hand - no one locally recommends a second hand car !

Price of course is a big factor - a car is a dead investment. 10-12 years ago, I would have laughed at this, but you become wiser with age :-).

The traffic on the road and the crawl factor during peak hours makes automatic a big convience. Maneuverability is another concern given the parking woes (see link), a smaller car makes sense . A diesel engine would cost approximately 75,000 more than a petrol engine. My rough calculation says that you recover the initial upfront costs within the first 2800 kms, after which the diesel engine is definitely wins in the cost of the ownership.As for second hand cars, the biggest problem is the trust factor. While in the US, it is easy to detect a lemon, India does not have equivalent rules and regulation to detect vehicles which have been through accidents or any other problems.

So it looks like it is going to be a mid-size, automatic, diesel, first hand car (hopefully) !!