The much-awaited Swift from Maruti Suzuki is on the roads. The Swift in its present design was showcased at the Paris Motor Show in September last year, and is the first model to be introduced in India within six months of its international launch.

 

The Suzuki’s Swift competes with premium hatchbacks like the Hyundai Getz, Ford Fusion, Fiat Palio, the GM Sail and Fiat Petra. Currently manufactured at the Magyar Suzuki plant in Hungary and likely to be manufactured in India and China later, the Swift is a departure from the Suzuki design and is more targeted at European buyers. Suzuki has worked with a team of designers and engineers of which at least a quarter are said to be Indian in collaboration with European automotive professional and ordinary motoring enthusiasts.

 

The Swift’s 1,300cc direct injection diesel engine has been co-developed with Fiat and is expected to offer premium performance and greater fuel efficiency. The Swift is shorter at 3,695 mm than the Esteem’s 4095mm, and at 1,690 mm it is wider than the Zen, Alto and Wagon R, which are 1495 cms wide or the Esteem’s 1575 mm. Swift also promises greater stability with its wider 2,390 mm-wheelbase compared to Maruti Esteem’s 2365 mm. It has been offered with four variants LXi, VXi, ZXi, VXi.

 

The dashboard houses the instrument cluster, the glove box and central console, with slots for the music system, aircon controls, and so on. The centrally-located instrumentation display includes a tachometer, speedometer and digital odometer, as well as a clearly visible digital clock. The climate control system has an easily-operable large circular dial. The material and textures used for the dashboard and car interior are of good quality and make the ride feel opulent. The door trims and other consoles, too, are nicely designed. The driving posture is excellent as the driver’s seat has a height adjuster and a slide range that ensures driving comfort. Leg room is sufficient at the back too. Relax in the back seat: the bench-like seat allows three passengers to sit together comfortably. Or else, it can be folded down to create additional boot space. Shifting gears is quite quick in the Swift, due to Maruti’s newly-designed short stroke shift linkage. The instrument console is clean and well textured, the three-spoke steering really sporty and there is adequate room for five passengers and their elbows. The top-end ZXi version should have been given adjustable steering, electric rear-view mirrors and a quality jukebox along with the automatic climatiser which it gets. Rear seats offer decent legroom but could have been better padded.

 

The Swift comes with Electric Power Steering (EPS), with motor located on the steering rack. It offers good feel and feels precise unlike the lifeless steering-column EPS systems in the Alto, Zen and Wagon R. The ride was on the soft side, and the Swift did wallow and roll through corners but the overall body control was superb.

 

The new generation VVT (variable valve timing) engines on offer in the European Swift would have pushed up the list price by almost a lakh of rupees – hence.  The familiar 1298cc motor breathes through 16 vales and develops a not-so-anemic 87 bhp at 6000 rpm and 11.7 kgm of torque at 4500 rpm. What it lacks is the kind of refinement a decade of engineering advancements have brought in. So it feels a bit stressed as it accelerates from standstill and a bit coarse as the revs build up. The gearbox though, is new, and the new imported ‘gears’ are an important couldn’t help in this power train equation. Going by the Speedo, the first gear is good for 58 kph, second 98 kph, and third, a bloody brilliant 150 kph.

 

All Maruti vehicles are economically priced vehicles that are certainly fuel efficient, and the Swift is no exception. After clocking almost 500km through both highway and inner city traffic, we figured 11.3kpl in start-stop city traffic, and 13.4kpl on the expressway. In mixed conditions it returned 12.4.

 

The base LXi gets power steering and air-conditioning, but has manual controls for doors and locking. Even this model gets colour-coded bumpers. The VXi is fairly well appointed, and gets ABS with electronic brake distribution (EBD) as an option – brilliant move, something we have been urging car makers to offer for a long time. The top-of-the-line ZXi gets airbags, ABS with EBD and 14-inch alloys plus lots of bells and whistles. You can see that Maruti Suzuki have done their homework well with the Indian Swift. It is arguably one of the safest, newest small cars to come to India. More importantly, it is an extremely desirable Suzuki at last.

Filed under: Maruti Cars in India