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Words: DipayanDutta
Photography: Vikrant Date
The Maruti 800 is an iconic car. It brought the motorcar to the people and it was cheap to buy and own. It was endlessly reliable and even if it broke down it would cost almost nothing to repair. This kind of car is what Maruti is excellent at making – the Alto, the Zen, the Wagon R, the Celerio – all economical, cheap to run and cheerful and now there’s this, the Celerio diesel. Its headline figure is not the power, or the weight, or its interior dimensions. No, what’s going to get people drooling is its 27.5kmpl ARAI-claimed fuel efficiency figure. Of course, this figure is indicative (ARAI’s fuel efficiency tests aren’t exactly real world) but Autocar India managed to get an everyday achievable 16.7kmpl in the city! How did Maruti get the Celerio diesel to go so far on a litre?
The answer lies in the diesel engine and the car’s kerb weight. Under the hood is an all-new engine and it is the world’s smallest diesel production engine no less. Maruti’s new penny pincher is a two-pot, 793cc, 8-valve, common-rail turbo diesel. First off, it doesn’t make a lot of power – 47bhp, but the amazing thing is that it makes 125Nm of torque. Compare that with the 1.0-litre Chevy Beat diesel’s 108Nm and you’ll see how healthy the Maruti is. Combine that with the Celerio’s 900kg kerb weight and what you have is a fiesty little hatch that makes stretching fuel its second nature.
Okay so the engine is not really a bastion of refinement. The idle is fairly lumpy and when you rev it, it sounds a bit like a Tata Ace. However once you’re driving it doesn’t feel too unrefined and as you go through the gears the engine settles into a more or less sedate buzz. If I had to pick faults with it, the engine is tremendously sluggish off the mark and the short first gear coupled with a long second means that you keep falling off boost in second and have to keep rowing between the two in in slow moving traffic. I imagine this problem will be further exaggerated when you load it up with people (isn’t that what most people who buy these cars do?).
Now the engine revs upto about 5000rpm, but anything above 4000rpm and it feels out of breath and power tails off. Drive peacefully is the message here.
It is however quite nice to drive if you can keep the momentum up. The 70kg extra that the diesel car weighs (over the petrol) actually weighs down the front end quite nicely. It feels a lot more planted and easier to manoeuvre than its petrol sibling. There are all the creature comforts you expect from a small hatch and
it even has Bluetooth connectivity. Pairing phones though is a process that can have even the Dalai Lama shoot off some choice expletives. Visually everything is still the same, a ZDi badge notwithstanding.
All in all, you get a decent city car that’s not too expensive. At `4.65-5.71 lakh, VDi to ZDi option pack, the Celerio diesel costs `75k more than its petrol counterpart. With the lack of decent diesel options in the sub-six-lakh-rupee bracket, you could either settle for a base-spec Grand i10, Chevrolet Beat, Tata Bolt or Nissan Micra or the Celerio. The accountant in me will advise the latter.
