Right now in India there is a big gap in the diesel segment for passenger car. One simply cannot but a diesel car under Rs 8 lakhs. Right now one has to start looking at the Magna variant of the Hyundai Grand i10 Nios to get a diesel. That car comes in at Rs 8.55 lakhs (on-road, Mumbai) which does not really make it a value for money option for customers. Also many then stretch their budgets to Rs 10 lakhs and get a petrol SUV too. But what about the mileage efficient small car? Recently images have surfaced online of the Maruti Baleno being tested with the 1.5-litre DDis diesel motor.
So if Maruti is going to bring back the diesel engine, should the Maruti Ignis Diesel also come in as a option. Find out below.
The Maruti Ignis diesel engine will be the new 1.5-litre BS6 compliant motor that was last seen in the Maruti Ertiga. It could come in a detuned state and be paired to a six-speed manual and AMT gearbox. The car will not change dimensions and tyre sizes will remain the same. DDiS badging could also comes on the side of the car. That all said, we could also see Maruti reviving it 793cc twin cylinder, all aluminum diesel engine that produced 47bhp and 125Nm of torque. That engine with a more power and a BS6 tune could be really efficient and will be a compact package to fit in the engine bay of the Ignis. We will have to wait and find out if that will happen.
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On the design front, nothing will change, the car had recently got a facelift and it won’t see any more updates.
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Now as we said in the start that a diesel engine is under testing. Only testing, since the company has not made any announcement. Right now for over a year Maruti has held on to it’s market share with the sale of only petrol cars. So that car could totally be only tested for exports. We will have to wait and see. Do we think that a diesel offering should be made available? With the price of diesel and petrol do close to each other and the lack of a cheap diesel car – yes, there should be one. Will it make sense for Maruti to reintroduce a cheap diesel car, we will have to wait and watch this year. A Maruti Ignis diesel or Celerio diesel would be welcome.
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