Maruti Suzuki are undoubtedly one of India’s biggest car manufacturers, and their latest plans for expansion are woven around indigenous production of the diesel engine that’s used in their products.
Currently the 1.3-litre diesel plants that go at the heart of Maruti Suzuki’s range of diesel variant cars is provided by Italian car manufacturers FIAT, and Maruti want to move beyond the restriction of the single sized engine, and develop a range of their very own diesel engines so that they can broaden their scope further in the Indian market.
Reports suggest that the prototype for an 800cc 2-cylinder engine has already been built, and is targeted towards powering a new commercial vehicle and a new small car, apart from the cars that already host a petrol engine of a similar capacity in the form the Alto and A-Star. According to news reports however, Maruti Suzuki don’t intend on stopping there, instead, they intend on taking this plan one step further and developing their very own 1.2-litre, 1.4-litre and 1.6-litre diesel engines as well, so that they can power the likes of the Swift, the Ertiga, the Ritz and others besides. It has also been put forward that the Research and Development for these engines will be conducted at Maruti Suzuki’s new R&D property at Rohtak in Haryana.
Speaking to the mainstream financial print media, Kenichi Ayukawa, MD, Maruti Suzuki India, confirmed that development of the new diesel engine was indeed under way, although he didn’t elaborate on how many engine variants and of what size were in the pipeline.
