Maruti Suzuki Alto is the largest selling car with the Maruti badge and that’s mainly due to its low cost of ownership and superior mileage. Maruti is introducing another version of the Alto next month which will be powered by a 1 liter k series engine as against the 800cc engine, which powers the currently available versions, and will be more powerful and fuel efficient than before.

The top end Alto costs Rs 2.75 lakhs and the new k series Alto will be dearer by 25 – 35 thousand. Currently the Tata Nano sets the benchmark with the highest fuel efficiency of 23.6 (as certified by ARAI), the new Alto is certain to return an efficiency of over 20 kmpl. Maruti Suzuki expects a jump of more than 50 percent in sales with the new Alto. Simultaneously Maruti is also planning to introduce a basic stripped down version of the Alto and is trying to price it in the Maruti 800 range. Maruti had to withdraw the 800 from 13 major cities as it did not meet BS4 emission norms.

Source – DNA