Maruti launched its Wagon R comes with an automatic gearbox. The AX version has tick marks against every conceivable detail, except one. And that is Maruti Suzuki’s much vaunted electronic power steering. Wagon-R comes with variants AX, LXi, VXi and LXi with Bharat III norms.

 

Amongst small cars, the Wagon R raison its engine, which with the manual transmission, makes it very quick indeed. The 1061 CC 16 valve unit offers 62 bhp at 6000 revs and 8.2 kgm at 3500 revs. The crib with the Wagon R was the rather stretched out manual gear lever, which makes shifting a chore. But wait a second, with the three-speed automatic, that’s taken care of. So there’s no cause to complain. 

 

Put it in D and the perky engine is all set to go. At 2800 revs, it shifts once and before the 4000 rpm mark, you get another thrust.  And the impression is reinforced till the Wagon R AX reaches 80 kph effortlessly. By now you have collected enough revs to keep pushing it, thinking highways can be brushed off easily sitting in it. But no, beyond 80 kph, the engine is actually strained and noisy.  At higher speeds, the AX begs for another gear which will do justice to the power plant.

 

The Wagon R has a 1061cc inline 4 cylinder cast iron engine which is basically the engine from the Maruti 800 with an extra cylinder. It uses fuel injection, controlled by a 32 bit ECU. Like all other marutis, even this car runs 4 valves per cylinder and 16 valves in total. 4 Valve engines have a high revving trait and rather low bottom end grunt. This engine is no exception. It generates 62bhp at 6200rpm which is pretty much the red line. But, low down the engine seems very underpowered especially with the air conditioner on.

 

The car uses a 5-speed gearbox with one reverse gear. Gears 2 and 3 are great for city use and the car is able to slot into 5th by the time you reach around 50kph. That means very reasonable fuel efficiency. Efficiency thus get compromised due to the fact that you need to rev just that wee bit more when compared to say the santro, but the efficiency figures on the highway of 19+ kmpl is excellent. Within city limits though, 13kmpl is easily achieved. The reason for the significant difference is the tall 5th gear, which keeps the engine revving very low, as a result the top speed of 155kmph is achieved in 4th. One grouse about the gearbox is its play, its just too much and can get irritating at times; the gearbox is also a bit notchy. At times, engaging reverse gear could involve double clutching.

 

This experience is surprising actually, considering that the Wagon R is an all-time best-seller in the Japanese market, where auto transmissions are more the rule rather than the exception. For the Indian market and for this specific engine, Maruti did not make any major changes in the basic design in the gearbox, and it comes as a fully assembled unit from Hamamatsu. The changes that have been done are restricted to the gear ratios to suit the engine.

 

Actually, the automatic Wagon R suits a very specific purpose to the hilt, and that is the home-to-office- and-back commute. But don’t expect more than 10 kpl in the urban run, even with sober, staid driving. With its small dimensions, the Wagon R is good as a city vehicle, and with the auto box doing justice to the low speeds one normally manages in urban traffic, it’s quite all right. And one wouldn’t recommend doing anything more than 80 kph in any Wagon R, anyway. The 8 inch booster assisted brakes are very efficient indeed. With McPherson struts at front and coil springs with a three-link rigid axle at the rear, the car’s suspension set-up does an adequate job, albeit dishing out a mildly harsher ride.

Filed under: Maruti Cars in India