Maruti Suzuki India Limited, India’s largest automaker, is working on a new diesel engine which is to be seen on board Celerio hatchback and the company’s Light Commercial Vehicles of the future. This new 800cc diesel engine, smallest in the market, is being developed at the Maruti Suzuki plant in Gurgaon and claims to have a mileage of 30 kmpl.
Maruti Suzuki unveiled Celerio at Auto Expo earlier this year with manual and automatic variants. It replaced A-Star and turned the game around with its USP, the Automated Manual Transmission (AMT). Celerio has received over 36,000 bookings so far, trumping Maruti’s own smaller estimate and now contributes for about 50 percent of Maruti’s entire sales volume, half of which is AMT version.
Maruti Suzuki Celerio is soon getting a diesel engine, along with its commercial cousin CodeY9T LCV and Eeco minivan. Launch set to take place this financial year, Maruti will certainly mark a new spot in entry-level diesel hatch category in India.
2014 Auto Expo showcased two currently rivalling A segment hot cakes - Maruti Celerio and Datsun Go. While Datsun Go has sold over 2,000 units within 10 days of its launch, Maruti Celerio on the other hand, has been more successful. It has generated about 1,000 unit bookings per day in the first month since launch which has pushed Maruti into thinking of doubling its production to 10,000 units per month.
