Maruti Ciaz BEATS Honda City & Hyundai Verna in July 2019

The Maruti Ciaz has outsold the Honda City and the Hyundai Verna in July 2019, and in a big way. While Maruti sold 2,397 units of the Ciaz C-Segment sedan in July 2019, Hyundai could manage only 1,890 units of the Verna. As for the Honda City, 1,927 units were sold in the same month. Sales of all three cars are coming under big pressure from the severe slowdown the Indian car market has been witnessing over the past year or so. While sales of the Ciaz improved marginally by less than 200 units month on month, sales of the Honda City and Hyundai Verna have seen significant dips from June 2019. The City is due for an all-new model next year, and sales are unlikely to pick up. As for the Verna, the car is likely to get big discounts in the coming months as it’s the newest in the segment, and Hyundai is expected to put its full weight behind it to push more stock.

The Ciaz sold in India currently is the facelifted version, which was introduced a year ago. The facelifted Ciaz gets 3 engine options: 2 in diesel and 1 in petrol. The diesel engines offered with the car include the 1.3 liter Fiat Multijet unit with 89 Bhp-200 Nm, and the in-house 1.5 liter-4 cylinder turbocharged unit with 94 Bhp-225 Nm. By April 2020, the Ciaz could become a petrol-only car given the fact that Maruti Suzuki is planning to phase out all diesel engined cars from its line-up in India. The Ciaz’s petrol engine is a 1.5 liter K-Series unit with 104 Bhp-138 Nm. This engine gets a mild hybrid unit, and is offered with 5 speed manual and 4 speed torque converter automatic gearbox options. The Fiat Multijet diesel gets a 5 speed manual while the in-house diesel engine gets a 6 speed manual. Prices of the Ciaz start from Rs. 8.2 lakhs.

Variant to variant, the Ciaz is cheaper than both the Hyundai Verna and the Honda City, and this attractive price tag is a big reason why the car is so popular in the Indian market. Other strengths of the Ciaz include spacious interiors which are now much plusher than before, a mild-hybrid petrol engine that’s quite fuel efficient, excellent after sales service by Maruti Suzuki, good resale value and top-class reliability. The Ciaz comes with twin airbags, ABS, speed alerts, reverse parking seat belt reminders and ISOFIX child seat mounts as standard across trims. Higher trims offer a reverse parking camera and a touchscreen infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. In future, the Ciaz is likely to get a more powerful hybrid powertrain. Also, a rebadged version fo the car will be supplied to Toyota for badge engineering and re-selling in India with the Toyota badge.