Car named Dezire to replace Esteem

For staunch three-box lovers, Maruti Suzuki is coming up with the new Dezire, the replacement for its long-serving Esteem. With the curtains down on the Esteem after a 14-year long drive, the new offering, Dezire, will have a host of contemporary new features which were otherwise missing in the Esteem and not available in any of the current lot of mid-sized cars.

Dezire, Maruti Suzuki’s new sedan on the Swift platform, will be manufactured only in India for the global market and will be available in both fuel options. It will sport a 1.3 litre petrol and the 1.3 litre DDiS multijet diesel engine, currently available in the Swift hatchback.

The company is taking the SX4 and the Zen Estilo route with Dezire, topping up the car with some luxury features. Besides the twin front ABS and Auto Temp Control, the new sedan is expected to don a new integrated DIN Stereo and new set of alloy wheels in the top line variant.

The company is also working on a few changes in the grille, foglamp and the tail lights to make the Dezire look different from the hugely successful Swift hatchback. It will come in mutli-variant models like the Swift.

The new sedan will be positioned as a practical family car and has been redesigned with wider rear space and more legroom, but is likely to be compact enough to qualify as a small car and may avail concessional excise duty benefits. Though the Dezire will be much longer than 3695 mm Swift hatchback, it is expected to be somewhat like the Tata Motors’ new Indigo compact, which is under four-metre in length and will be very competitively priced. Its launch price is expected to be in the range of Rs 4.7 lakh for the base variant and going up to Rs 6 lakh for the top-end model.

Esteem, which had been one of the most popular mid-size cars like its other sibling Zen, has been phased out after it completed its product cycle in the Indian market. The production stopped from December 24 and Dezire, like the Estilo replaced Zen as the new model, will take on the competition from Hyundai Accent, Ford Ikon, General Motors Aveo and MahindraRenault Logan.

Courtesy:economictimes.com
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