I want to bid farewell to my Suzuki Mehran 2018. This was the first 0-meter car that I had driven for nearly 3 years till about +36,000 KM. My previous personal and family cars - Suzuki FX '84 (bought 1998), Suzuki Margalla 1996 (bought 2008), and Honda Civic Reborn VTI Oriel Prosmatec 2007 (bought 2021) - were all +50,000 KM driven and +10 years old when bought.
Suzuki Mehran was an office car and during my previous appraisal I have been told that my company will upgrade my car to Toyota Yaris 1.3 Manual next month.
I had a love/hate relationship with Mehran that is also called 'the boss' or 'middle class person's car' in Pakistan. The positive aspects of the car in my experience include excellent fuel economy with AC (11-12 km/liter in rush hour traffic and up to 16km/liter with AC long drives with little traffic; daily 55KM commute), cheap spare parts, safety (immobilizer), and reliability since it did not had a single breakdown during the nearly three years I had driven since Oct. 2018.
The negative aspects of the car include cabin noise (I had to use a cloth to plug-in the gap in the back hatchet lock to prevent the nagging noise; I think it was due to a design defect), bad AC performance in summers (my right had used to get burned when driving in summers since the AC vents are located only at the center), and slow acceleration that felt like a gadha gari when there were four people on board.
But overall I have positive experience riding the car to office and with family. I used to commute 55 km from my home to office in this car from Oct. 2018 until the coronavirus lockdown in March 2020 when we were told to work from home.
I had taken 'the boss' on long drives till Sandspit beach and Bahria Town without any problems. Moreover, the time I went to multiple hospitals in this car looking for a hospital for my wife's delivery and also to parks, hotels, and relatives will always remain imprinted in my mind.
Bye bye Mehran, you will be remembered!
