Back in 2005, a few of us automotive journalists were taken to a desolate car park near the industrial area of Manesar in Haryana. Here, we were given an exclusive opportunity to test drive the freshly unveiled Maruti Suzuki Swift. And that car was a revelation – a Maruti hatchback that was genuinely fun to drive. While the original Maruti Zen with its 60PS fuel-injection engine was no slouch, the original Swift was another level.
Maruti Suzuki was still big, but the Swift proved that the carmaker could make fun, well-designed cars. And boy, did the Indian public react. Waiting time exceeded six to eight months, and the company was simply unable to meet demand after a point. It got so bad that Jagdish Khattar, then the managing director of the company, personally signed an apology letter that was printed in newspapers. The success of the Swift hastened the Japanese carmaker’s bid to build a new factory in Manesar.
Fast-forward 19 years, and on that desolate car park now stand tall buildings with multi-crore apartments overlooking Maruti’s Manesar plant. The company has sold over 25 lakh Swifts since. Each of the three generations of the car has won multiple awards, including the Indian Car of The Year (ICOTY) each time. And now, Maruti Suzuki has revealed the Swift’s fourth iteration. Incidentally, this car is now manufactured at a facility in Gujarat and instead of a desolate car park, we were invited to stay at the JW Marriott Golfshire near Nandi Hills outside Bengaluru, one of the nicest hotel properties in the country.
‘Kitna Deti Hai?’
Times have clearly changed but has the car? Is it still a fun car for younger consumers? Will it draw away from the current SUV obsession of both automobile companies and consumers? Let’s answer these questions with my experience of the new Swift during its first media drive. I would like to specify that these are just my initial impressions. Hopefully, I will be getting the car for a slightly longer duration soon to have a more detailed experience of living with it.
Maruti-Suzuki had created a short ‘track’ where we could experience the agility of the new Swift. This included a small section going through some ‘smart cones’, which gave me a sense of the car’s steering ability and handling. And of course, since it was a Swift, it handled superbly. It was agile and could turn on a dime. The steering felt perfectly weighted for a small car. None of that should be a surprise though, given the car’s lineage.
Now, what was a surprise and is being discussed incessantly on social media is the car’s new Z12 engine. Here are the facts. A 1,197-cc engine replaces Maruti Suzuki’s venerable K12 engine (that still does service on the Fronx, Baleno and WagonR). The car loses a cylinder (it’s a three-cylinder unit now) and 10 per cent of power (81.5PS versus 89PS on the K12). That said, it’s extremely fuel-efficient and has a lovely ‘gruff’ sound.
The new Swift has been tested to deliver 25.75 kilometres per litre (kmpl). And after driving both the manual and the Automatic Manual Transmission variants, the trip computer showed that I was getting more than 22 kmpl. And here is the funny thing, I was not driving for efficiency. I was gunning the car, perhaps even pushing it to its limits.
Sure, on the Bengaluru-Hyderabad highway, you do get a sense of the power running out, even though the car can go plenty fast when you push it. But when I took it on rural roads around Nandi Hills, I found the power delivery to be impressive and the drive to be engaging. Maruti-Suzuki, which used the ‘You’re the Fuel’ tagline for its original Swift, has reverted to its raison d’etre – ‘Kitna Deti Hai (what’s the mileage)?’. This car is indeed super-efficient in that regard.
And it has to be, petrol is expensive, with prices averaging above Rs 100/litre in many states. But the Swift is expensive too. The basic LXi model at Rs 6.49 lakh (ex-showroom price) is over Rs 80,000 thousand more expensive than the entry-spec Tata Tiago, the cheapest car in the mid-hatchback segment and over Rs 60,000 more expensive than its stablemate, the Maruti Suzuki Ignis.
If you buy the top-end ZXi+ AGS, on-road prices easily exceed Rs 10 lakh. Except the car’s extreme fuel economy helps soften the blow. If petrol prices increase after the Lok Sabha election, such figures will help the new Swift even more. The numbers are so good that Partho Banerjee, Senior Executive Officer, Sales and Marketing at Maruti Suzuki India Limited, told me that the company doesn’t even need to think about a hybrid on this car.
Also read: Maruti Suzuki Jimny is no Thar or Rubicon. It’s no ‘failure’ either
Evolutionary design
On the design front, importantly the ‘Swift silhouette’ remains the same. This is an ‘evolutionary’ design and nothing revolutionary, unlike the engine. The headlights and taillights have been reprofiled, and now have a daytime Running Light (DRL) LED with a ‘L’ that gives the new Swift (and this might sound like anathema to some people) the look of a baby Jaguar from the front.
The rear door handle has dropped down from the ‘C-pillar’ on the outgoing model and returned to the door. The familiar black interior and the top-end variants now get a large nine-inch ‘SmartPlay Pro+’ touchscreen which is angled ever so slightly toward the driver, as well as access to wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
However, I did feel that the Swift could and would be well served with a more powerful motor. Look at Hyundai and Kia, they offer the option of a turbo-petrol engine on their cars, which are truly tuned for performance. Sure, fuel economy suffers, but the Swift is targeted at young people, possibly as the first car they buy after landing a decent job.
I was fairly young – and earned peanuts – when I first drove the Swift. I remember asking Maruti Suzuki to send me one for a couple of months and had a genuine blast, even though I ended up spending quite some money on fuel. Yes, fuel efficiency matters, and yes better fuel efficiency is better for the environment, but the new Swift (even though it’s pretty darn good) can be so much more.
@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)