From the start of this year, Maruti has been busy updating their existing range of cars. They have been adding safety features like airbags and ABS, as it will soon become mandatory in India to offer such safety features in cars. Otherwise, the cars will not be allowed to be on sale. For this reason, Maruti has started updating their cars. The cars which are not being updated, will be discontinued – like Gypsy, Alto, Omni, etc (Alto will be replaced by new gen).
After updating the Baleno and Ignis, Maruti has now updated the Eeco with safety features. To comply with Bharat NCAP crash tests also coming in by October 2019, the Eeco has also been re-engineered and will also get side impact bars and crumple zones so as to adhere to full frontal impact, frontal offset and side impact crash tests.
2019 Maruti Suzuki Eeco gets standard safety features such as driver airbag, a speed warning system that emits a beep at 80 kmph, rear parking sensors and ABS as standard fitments. The inclusion of these features has resulted in new pricing for the Eeco, which is currently priced between Rs.3.37 lakhs – Rs. 6.33 lakhs.
The price hike will range between Rs.400 to Rs.23,000 depending on variant. Aside from the safety feature upgrades, Maruti Eeco does not see any feature or mechanical upgrades. It continues to be powered by the same engine, and comes in the same variants.
Maruti Eeco, offered in 5 and 7 seater options, is powered by a 1.2 liter BS VI compliant engine offering 73 bhp power at 6,000 rpm and 101 Nm torque at 3,000 rpm. It also gets a factory fitted CNG kit. Maruti also sells the Eeco as Tour V equipped with features like a speed governor and is designed especially to cater to the demands of fleet and cab operators.
As seen in the image above, both Eeco and Omni are very important for Maruti. Together these generate about 15k units in sales for the company every month. With the Omni getting discontinued, Maruti plans to increase production of Eeco to meet the demand. Incidentally the Eeco had also earlier scored zero starts in Global NCAP. But at that time, it did not have any airbags. Maruti Eeco with airbags has not been crash tested.
