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Text: Veeresh Malik
Images: Ashish Jain |
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How do you research and write about a car which is the largest seller in the country anyways? Anything one writes will be incomplete or amiss, because the fact remains, the Maruti Alto, in all its versions, has swept the country’s cheque-books at the only gate that counts – the purchase gate, which thereafter leads to the gate at your home. The new Alto K10, to this correspondent’s judgement, is another winner. And it looks good too – inside and, especially, outside.
Amongst the many cars we own in our family, is also an Alto – bought as a replacement a few years ago for a very dearly beloved and reliable Maruti 800, which had simply grown long in the tooth. The salesman from the dealer who had come to our home to deliver the new Alto took one look at the old 800, and asked us to please hold the car while he called his parents to quickly come over and make a decision. By evening, they had paid cash for the Maruti 800, and went home happy.
The Maruti Alto, with the 800cc engine, satisfies almost everything most of us Indians want in a car. It’s a great air-conditioner on wheels. And it also worked well subsequently as an easy to maintain private taxi for a long time after it was new. Resale is painless – depreciation is lower than that for many other cars and brands. The only small problem was the perceptible drop in power with the air-conditioner switched on. That, to the best of one’s experience, has been solved with the new engine in the Alto K10.
And the price of the K10 is right too, as dealer enquiries reveal. Get into a standard demo car, and you get truth from the mouths of drivers who ride with you – which is that converting a customer who has come for an ‘ordinary’ Alto into a K10 is simply not a problem. The problem, according to his boss, the sales manager, is that trying to motivate an Alto customer to jump further up into a higher category – convert to a Ritz or a Swift for example – is going to be difficult. In fact, the new Alto K10 may well cannibalise higher car sales.
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Either which way, here’s my drive report and wish list:
a) Something needs to be done to the gear shift – probably work on the cables and shifters deep down in the bowels of the gearbox. Shortening the gear lever and putting a fatter round grip is not going to do it. The gear shift needs to feel like the
one in the Swift, and Maruti-Suzuki can do it – they just need the feedback.
b) A two-door export version, available in limited numbers along the lines of the great Carbon/Steel options for the Maruti Zen would be wonderful for those who want to do away with the rear seat and place some great audio there instead. That may not be possible, as the Alto is exported only in a 4-door version.
c) ABS, airbags, and all the other bits and pieces which make for better safety – especially if the buyer has access to somebody who can spike up the engine some more.
d) Tyre size and suspension modifications are very technical issues, and wider tyres are not always better. Higher speed rated tyres maybe, but the fitted rim and tyre size seemed just fine – even if they look skinny.
e) The engine has so much more potential in it. A short visit to one of Delhi’s better engine tinkerers reveals that there are already a few K10s coming in for flash jobs on the engine control module. The car is extremely light, so maybe somebody might fit wings too.
f) If you’re overweight, or more than 5’6” in height, then some compromises will have to be made as far as comfort is concerned. Conversely, once in, this becomes a wraparound car – and most Indians are not overly large anyway.
There are many of us out here who saw international quality in Indian cars for the first time with the Maruti Zen. A pity it had to be phased out. The Maruti Alto K10, which now rhymes with Zen, is certainly a worthy successor.
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