What if Maruti Suzuki builds a sporty station wagon on the Baleno…

The Maruti Baleno is the most spacious hatchback sold by the Indian automaker, and is also one of the best selling models in the automaker’s line up in India. Even Toyota sells this hatchback by badge-engineering it, and calling it as the Glanza. While Maruti has not indicated any new body style for the Baleno, rendering artist Shoeb R Kalania has come up with a speculative render that shows what a station wagon based on the car could look like. He’s gone a step further to even create a sporty, low rider version of the Baleno station wagon. Here, check it out.

As the render reveals, the Baleno Station Wagon is essentially an extended body version of the hatchback, somewhat like what the Datsun Go+ is to the Go in terms of styling and size. On the sportier version, the rendering artist has reduced ride height and added a body kit that further accentuates the high performance appeal of the car.

Maruti already has a 1 liter-3 cylinder BoosterJet turbocharged petrol engine being offered on the sporty version of the Baleno named the RS. This engine, which makes 101 Bhp-150 would be quite apt for both the regular and sporty versions of the car’s stationwagon body style. Considering the fact that the Baleno is based on a lightweight HEARTECT platform, a station wagon version of the car would not be too heavy.

Stationwagons have typically been very poor sellers in the Indian market despite the sheer practicality they offer in terms of size and versatility. Maruti too went the station wagon way a few years ago in case of the Baleno sedan. Called the Baleno Altura, the car remains one of the many forgotten, slow selling car that Maruti has sold in the past in India. Other car makers haven’t fared any better when it comes to station wagons. Tata tried with the Indigo Marina, Skoda with the Octavia Combi and more recently, Nissan with the Datsun Go+, which continues to be on sale.

For now, the Maruti Baleno sold in India gets three more engine options apart from the turbo petrol unit. The other engines include two naturally aspirated petrols and a turbocharged diesel. The naturally aspirated petrol engines are the 1.2 liter K-Series unit with 82 Bhp-113 Nm and the 1.2 liter DualJet with 90 Bhp-113 Nm. The DualJet petrol engine also gets a mild hybrid powertrain. The other engine on the Baleno is the 1.3 liter Fiat Multijet turbo diesel with 74 Bhp-190 Nm. All three engines get 5 speed manual gearboxes as standard while the K-Series petrol is also offered with a CVT automatic gearbox. Maruti has offered the Zeta and Alpha variants of the Baleno to Toyota for badge engineering as the Glanza.