The Ciaz is quite an attractive car at first glance. The first thing that catches your attention is the attractive face. There are pleasing lines and angles on the bonnet and around the large, four slat chromed grill that do gel well with the projector headlamps. It’s unmistakably a Maruti Suzuki face but more like the younger weight lifting brother of the rather rounded SX4. And in side profile there is a nicely sloped shoulder line that lends the sides a touch of class and flair. But then you come to the rear of the car and there seems to be something amiss. I can’t tell if its the fact that the tail lights look too much like a competitor or just not Suzuki enough. Or maybe I’m getting used to the family look ideology of building cars. It doesn’t look quite like a Suzuki and the busy design of the tail lamps is not helped by the large faux air vents in the rear bumper. Despite this small misgiving though it still manages to be a pleasing car to look at from most angles.
Going back to that first glance and another thing you immediately notice is that this is a large car. It’s just shy of four and half meters in length and it packs in a lot of space. This is certainly the car for the long legged. In fact with the front seat at its furthest position with Suresh (6’2″) in front I had fairly comfortable knee room. With Suresh’s seat set to comfortable rather than ridiculous the knee and leg room turns luxurious. There are little neat touches like the way the fold out grab handles smoothly fold back into place or how the front and rear reading lamps are themselves the switches.
The instrument cluster is ver similar to the Swift’s unit and has a dash of chrome around the dials while the central console now features a new touch screen unit called SmartPlay. This will be available in the top of the line Z+ trim levels. It’s a simple intuitive system that’s packed with voice recognition, Bluetooth connectivity and all the audio inputs you need. The voice recognition also claims to be designed specifically for Indian accents. The top three trims also get climate control as standard. In fact the projector headlamps and rear air con vents are standard across all models. This will also be one of the first Maruti’s to feature safety features like ABS and driver side airbag in all but the base spec trim. The ZXi trims get passenger side airbag too.
The Ciaz has been developed on an all new modular ultra lightweight platform that adopts Suzuki’s Total Effective Control Technology or S-TECT. This features a liberal use of high tensile steel across the body panels for a lighter, more durable body and a wide wheelbase for stability. And it’s light too, weighing in at just 1,010kg for the petrol and 1,105kg for the diesel.
The Ciaz will feature two familiar engines – the 1.4-litre K-Series petrol and the 1.3-litre Multijet diesel. Both the diesel and the petrol have been worked on specifically for the Ciaz. The petrol engine is dubbed the K14 and is the latest iteration of the K-series of engines. Lighter internals and revised bore and stroke numbers allow it to make 92.45PS at 6000rpm and 130Nm torque at 4000rpm. While 1.4-litre may sound like a small engine for a mid sized sedan remember that this is a fairly light car. The petrol engine is smooth but a fair deal of engine noise creeps into the cabin. It needs to be revved and that’s not a bad thing but the ratios are spaced quite far apart for efficiency and this kills the fun.
The Diesel engine makes 90PS at 4000rpm and 200Nm of torque at 1750rpm. The tuning of the Multijet has been further tweaked to produce a fairly linear spread of torque and this makes it the more pleasant car to drive. It’s quick too and on one stretch of highway the speedo was nudging past 150kmph with a fair number of revs to go before redline. Of the two power plants the diesel with its better spread of torque is easily the more pleasing engine to drive.
What the Ciaz does excel in is its ride quality and the chassis and suspension worked well to tune out some very rough stuff on our drive. Maruti engineers have spent time working on noise dampening and suspension tuning and this seems to have paid off. On our short drive on mostly state and national highways there was little scope to put to test its cornering abilities so we can’t really comment on the handling but it does feel like a solid stable package. There is some body roll but it’s controlled and grip levels are really good with the 195 section tyres. Even under hard braking to a stop from highway speeds for a u-turning tractor produced no misbehaviour.
Maruti is claiming some impressive mileage figures of 26.21kmpl (ARAI) for the diesel and 20.73kmpl for the petrol. And on these numbers alone it should make a fair few waves. That said the pricing will be key and considering that Maruti may plan to position the Ciaz above the City and the Verna as a C+ segment player which will in turn mean that its pricing will be extremely critical. With its impressive set of standard features and feature rich top end models if the price is right this could be another stunner from Maruti.
(Article & photo courtesy: Overdrive.in dated 2nd Sept 2014)
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