VITARA’S GRANDEUR RECEIVES A POWER BOOST.

Within a few months of its launch the Maruti Grand Vitara gets not only a facelift but a dash of extra power as well. For those who liked the Grand Vitara, the new one is even grander.

That is the one big advantage that the car buying public gets because of the vehicle being a completely built unit (CBU) import. As soon as the vehicle is refurbished for its home market, the same vehicle has to be sold in all the markets that it is being exported to. In the case of India, the only place where the company loses out is in getting the car re- homologated. So as the Vitara Grand underwent an upgrade in Japan, we in India get the same car. In case the car was being manufactured in India the life of the product would have been much longer and it is unlikely that any car would have undergone an upgrade in such a short time.

So within a very short time of the Grand Vitara being launched in India, we saw the refurbished car undergoing testing at VRDE and its subsequent launch in December.

The changes are few but with the claimed engine horsepower going up by 12PS we just had to put the car to the test and see how much better it performed. Most of the parameters that determine the overall rating of a car in an OVERDRIVE road test remain exactly the same and we will not elaborate on them again. For those of you who want the details you can refer to the road test of the Grand Vitara XL-7 in the May 2003 issue of OVERDRIVE.