You read it first on MotorBeam. Maruti Suzuki is known as the king of small cars in India and that is evident on the sales chart. The country’s largest carmaker has seven cars amongst the top 20 highest selling cars in India. On the flip side, their product lineup also consists of a few cars which don’t even sell even in single digit numbers in a month, such as the Kizashi sedan and Grand Vitara SUV. While the Kizashi was discontinued last year due to it being a failure in the Indian market, Maruti Suzuki has only recently discontinued the overpriced Grand Vitara.
Maruti Suzuki imported the Grand Vitara in the Indian market from Japan via the CBU route, hence it was overpriced and the recent hike in import duties coupled with the depreciating Rupee made the car very expensive. Just like the Mitsubishi Outlander, the Grand Vitara also came with a single petrol engine option. Our diesel loving country couldn’t find the Grand Vitara as a feasible option that resulted in poor sales and the decision to axe the product by the company.
The Suzuki SUV features a 4-cylinder, 2.4-litre petrol engine that produces 164 BHP of peak power with 225 Nm of peak torque, mated to an option of a 5-speed manual and 4-speed automatic transmission. The ARAI certified mileage of the Grand Vitara SUV is 10.41 km/l, which was again a sore point as the real world mileage was around 5-6 km/l. The Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara comes with a hefty on-road price of Rs. 21.67 lakhs in Mumbai for the 2.4 MT variant and Rs. 23.33 lakhs for the 2.4 AT variant. At this price bracket, consumers can opt for a wide range of mature vehicles in the Indian market.
As we all know, the SUV segment in our country is getting bigger and better. People have considerably better options from brands with better visibility. The Grand Vitara doesn’t hold a candle in front of better products like the Honda CR-V, SsangYong Rexton and Toyota Fortuner. In order to boost market share, Maruti Suzuki is eyeing this segment keenly and is expected to launch three new SUVs in the coming future that includes the next generation Grand Vitara, which will be produced locally with an aggressive price tag, featuring a diesel engine. Suzuki recently launched the 2013 Grand Vitara (pictured below) which isn’t being offered in India.
