Maruti Suzuki Swift facelift primed for a pre-July launch?

Maruti Suzuki has begun facing the heat of a new car onslaught by competing car brands in India and the car maker’s top sellers such as the Swift and the Dzire have seen sales fall in April 2014. The Swift and Dzire have been due for facelifts for while now. The Swift Facelift could be launched as early as July 2014.

The car is expected to come with mild updates on the outside and feature additions on the inside. Speculations also suggest that the facelifted Swift will come with a price bump up, an indication that the facelift will more than just skin deep. Mechanically though, the car is likely to be unchanged.

The following new features are likely to be offered on the 2014 Swift Facelift, and the same set of features could be carried over to the Dzire compact sedan facelift to follow.

• Cruise Control
• Daytime Running LEDs
• New stop lamp design
• Revised alloy wheel design
• Keyless entry with start-stop button
• Dual tone dashboard
• Leather wrap for the steering wheel
• Auto up & down functions for the driver-side power window
• Revised front bumpers
• Revised front grille

The car will retain the 1.2 liter-4 cylinder K-Series petrol and the 1.3 liter Fiat Multijet turbo diesel engines. Both engines will drive the front wheels of the Swift by means of the 5 speed manual gearbox. Top end variants of the Swift will continue to offer the safety package consisting of ABS+EBD and twin airbags.

The facelifted Swift comes at a time when the B+ segment hatchback space is all set to see new additions in the form of the all-new 2015 Hyundai i20 and the new Honda Jazz, two cars that are likely to offer more space than the Swift, and also a more comprehensive set of features.

An interesting rumour doing the rounds is that Maruti Suzuki is mulling the addition of an automated manual transmission (AMT) to the Swift Facelift. An AMT option on the diesel Swift should be a straight forward affair considering that Tata Motors has readied up a similar set up on the Zest (Multijet diesel + AMT).

The Swift has never been sold with an automatic gearbox in India, though such variants have been available internationally. The time is just right for Maruti Suzuki to raise the bar and launch an AMT equipped Swift Diesel in India as Volkswagen is planning a Polo Diesel DSG Automatic and Tata Motors is readying up the Bolt Diesel AMT.