Maruti Suzuki sells every second car in India and is now going fresh with its existing portfolio. The largest selling premium hatchback Swift will get a new design and new petrol engine. Maruti's largest selling product Maruti Alto will be released in two new variants.

According to a source from the automobile industry, the Alto will have a stripped down version to take on Tata Motors’ small car Nano and an up market variant which will come loaded with the new KB series engine to take on Hyundai's Santro, GM’s Spark and other compact cars in the Indian market.

The Maruti WagonR and the Versa are also being revamped while the company will tweak the engines of 25-year old Maruti 800 and the Omni to meet the new BS4 emission standards that would come in April 2010. The sports utility vehicle Grand Vitara is also likely to don a new engine.

Speaking about the new events slated in the auto majors list of priorities, Maruti Suzuki MD & CEO S Nakanishi said, “We have exhausted our quota of new cars with eight new launches in India in the past three years. Now we are looking at strengthening our leadership by refreshing our old portfolio.” 

Maruti Suzuki has developed the new KB series petrol engines with an investment of Rs 1,200 crore. This engine will be strapped in several of these cars. In addition to this, the company capex of Rs 1,800 crore in the fiscal will also fund the portfolio revamp. The refurbishing process will save heavy incremental cost that go into developing newer cars and platforms. The minimum cost is Rs 50-100 crore for upgrading a car while developing a brand new car could eat up investments of Rs 600-1,000 crore.

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Posted by Amrith K.A on 25 May, 2009 3:07:49 PM IST #