For most luxury car owners in India, carbon-ceramic brakes are not worth the extra money. They are lighter, they shrug off heat that makes steel brakes fade, they don’t rust, and they make very little dust, but on the 2026 Porsche Cayenne Turbo they cost Rs 13.5 lakh as an option, according to Autocar India. They make sense on a heavy, very fast car that you drive hard on ghat roads or take on track
If you can stretch to about Rs 90 lakh on-road, the Mercedes-Benz GLC is the most complete midsize luxury SUV on sale in India right now: it has the biggest boot, the longest wheelbase and the most modern cabin of the four. The BMW X3 is the one to buy if you enjoy driving, but only in 30 xDrive form. The Volvo XC60 gives you the most equipment for the money in a single, fully
On a used luxury EV, the high-voltage battery decides the deal. Before you pay, get two things in writing from an authorised dealer: a battery health read-out for that VIN, and the exact date and kilometre limit on which its battery warranty ends. Most luxury EVs sold in India carry an 8-year battery warranty (the Mercedes EQE SUV was launched with 10 years), counted from the car’s first sale, not from your purchase. The warranty
Quattro, xDrive and 4MATIC are the all-wheel-drive brand names of Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, and each name covers more than one kind of hardware. BMW’s xDrive is a rear-biased system that uses an electronically controlled clutch to send drive to the front axle. Mercedes’ 4MATIC on its bigger cars uses a centre differential with a fixed 45:55 front-to-rear split, while its compact cars run front-wheel drive with a clutch that adds rear drive when needed.
A used Volvo XC60 or XC90 is one of the more sensible luxury SUV buys in India, but the year you pick matters more than the model. Cars from October 2021 onwards are petrol mild hybrids with Google-based infotainment. Earlier cars are diesels, and in Delhi-NCR the oldest of them are hitting the 10-year age limit now. The other thing most buyers miss is what does not come with the car. Volvo’s standard warranty on
If you are over six feet tall, the luxury SUVs with the most front headroom on paper are the BMW X7, BMW X5 and Land Rover Defender 110, each with more than 1,030mm according to their makers’ figures. If your legs are the problem rather than your head, the Volvo XC60, Audi Q7 and Volvo XC90 give the most front legroom of the cars we compared, at more than 1,035mm. That split matters more than
Rear-wheel steering turns the back wheels by a few degrees, usually under 10, so a long luxury car behaves like a shorter one at parking speeds and a longer, steadier one on the highway. At low speed the rear wheels turn the opposite way to the fronts, which shrinks the turning circle; above a set speed they turn the same way, which calms lane changes. In India it is a Rs 1 crore-plus feature: it
Of the luxury cars we compared, the Range Rover and the Land Rover Defender 110 have the biggest boots behind the rear seats, at 818 litres and 786 litres, by Land Rover’s block-measured figures. The BMW X5 is next at 650 litres, by BMW India’s figure. If you need seven seats and luggage space at the same time, the Defender 130 leaves the most room behind its third row, at 290 litres. At the other
A panoramic sunroof is worth having in India only if it comes with a proper way to shut the sun out. That means a solid, powered sunshade, or switchable glass that can turn opaque. A big glass roof with no blind, or with a thin mesh screen, will heat the cabin and the heads of the people under it for much of the year in Delhi, Rajasthan, Hyderabad or Chennai. So before you fall for
A prepaid service package from Audi, Volvo, Lexus or Jaguar Land Rover can save you money, but none of these four brands publishes its current package prices online. The most recent public figures work out to about Rs 25,000 a year for Volvo’s three-year package (2021-22 price, plus taxes, wear parts included) and roughly Rs 45,000 to Rs 87,000 a year for Audi’s five-year plan, depending on the model (2018 price, before GST). Lexus and