Maruti Suzuki's Strategy For Diesel Vehicles In India

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Maruti Suzuki acquired a license to manufacture Fiat's 1.2 litre multijet diesel engine in India for its own vehicles. It beats having to develop an engine by itself and the Fiat engine has been used by Tata and Fiat for long enough for it to have proven itself. The Fiat 1.2 litre engine is a 4-cylinder engine, which means less vibration than comparable diesel engines in vehicles sold in India that have 3-cylinder engines (although Nissan claims to have solved the vibration issue associated with 3-cylinder engines in its Nissan Micra, which is also sold under a Renault badge as the Renault Pulse).Although the Fiat 1.2 litre multijet diesel engine is a rather good engine, Maruti Suzuki is using the engine to power all of its diesel vehicles from the Maruti Swift and Maruti Ritz hatchbacks to the Maruti Swift DZire and Maruti SX4 sedans, and may use it in the Maruti Ertiga minivan/MUV too. This does get buyers of the higher-end Maruti sedans thinking because when they pay up to twice as much as the Ritz hatchback when buying an SX4, they get the exact same engine so would have a car that feels underpowered. Their vehicles are still selling like hot cakes with long waiting periods (the long waiting periods owing mostly to the labor disputes that they have had to solve at their Manesar and Gurgaon manufacturing plants) but the fact that the engine for higher-priced vehicles is also used in cheaper vehicles would have at least dented the sales of the SX4 sedan a bit.Comparing the Maruti Swift DZire and the Maruti SX4, the two seem to differ only in shape and ground clearance. Both are sedans and when the SX4 has no distinct advantage over the Swift DZire, at least some of Maruti's customers would have considered a shift from purchasing an SX4 to purchasing a Swift DZire.If you look at Lexus's strategy in the middle east, they may have offered the 3.5-litre engine in their IS and ES vehicles, but the LS bears a 4.5-litre engine (or is it a 4.7-litre engine?) to distinguish itself and to justify the price tag associated with the LS sedan. The LS is not a hot-seller and isn't featured by Lexus either (determined by its position in the showroom - the other models are placed toward the windows for a greater visibility but the LS lies chucked away in a corner) but for people who want that extra exclusivity, they do have the LS sedan as an offering. That's besides the point though - if Maruti wants to boost the sales of its higher-end sedans, it ought to offer a better engine than its other sedan.