Maruti Suzuki is all set to tread a very new path with its new Ignis. The Japanese car maker calls it a Premium Urban Compact car and despite a small footprint the car still has a generous wheelbase which means there’s more space on the inside of the car. It’s the first launch of the new year for Maruti and the price revealed by the manufacturer is an explosive one.
The Ignis is quite the looker and we've told you all about the design of the car. The Ignis comes with 15" high gloss black alloy wheels, cladding on wheel arches, and a clamshell with air vent garnish. The headlamps are integrated into the grille and we’ll see LED Projector headlamps too make its way into the car, which will be a first for Maruti Suzuki. It also sees a dual tone roof - white and black roof for the blue car and red with black. We see a bit of Wagon R DNA in the Ignis and can't help but feel it's the car's successor
The LED DRLs add a bit of character to the Ignis
What is also prominent is the wheels of the car that fall outside the design and this accounts for very short overhangs and as we said earlier translates into a generous amount of space inside. So, there are a lot of SUV elements added to the car, just like the Renault Kwid.
The Maruti Suzuki Ignis is described as a Premium Urban Compact Car
Now, we've already told you all there is to know about the Ignis, but the India-spec car does get some unique elements. The cabin gets a floating layered design and the big screen with a dominant speedometer looks good. There are toggle switches like what we find on the MINI for AC controls and it’s new coming from Maruti.
The interior also sees a dual tone styling - black and grey, but the console and door handle carries the exterior colour, though only on the red, blue and titanium. So, it will depend on what variants on offer as Maruti plans to provide customisation on the car as well. We will finally see both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto make its way into the Maruti car and we know it’s been long pending, but Maruti Suzuki wants to cater to a wider audience and with these features, the Ignis will surely help in achieving that. However, the base variants of the Ignis might not come with the high-end features and we’ll know more once the specifications are released.
The Ignis comes with toggle switches for operating the AC
While we are still to lay our hands on the specifications of the car, Maruti Suzuki announced that the Ignis will come with both petrol and diesel engine and both the engines will come with the Auto Gear Shift option. In fact C.V Raman, Executive Director, R&D, Maruti Suzuki said that the AGS was done for India, and the reason for not going with the CVT is that people prefer to have a good automatic car at a reasonable cost and customers prefer to spend on embellishing their cars with customization options. As we’ve seen with the Brezza, the Ignis too will come with a whole bunch of customisation options - roof wraps, fog lamp bezel and grille colour strips, interior dash colour trims to name a few.
Maruti Suzuki will come with a bunch of customisation options
On the safety front, the Ignis will be equipped with seatbelt pretensioners and ABS and dual airbags will be part of standard equipment. The new generation platform is lighter yet has higher torsional rigidity which means there’s more stability. More recently, the Euro-spec version of the model received 3 stars in the Euro NCAP crash test results.
The Maruti Suzuki Ignis will come with 15 inch wheels
Maruti Suzuki will open bookings for the Ignis in the first week of January and the car can be booked through an online app.
