Maruti Suzuki, the car of the masses for India, has done the unthinkable by breaking away from its legacy of, well, sluggishness. It has offered a hot hatch to Indians, who find comfort in thinking like their neighbour and mimicking their docile choices.
With the Baleno RS, Maruti mated a turbocharger—a magical coconut-shaped fan that helps the engine burn better—to a petrol engine for the first time. Though turbo helped trim the size of the 3-pot cylinder to mere 998 CC, it amplified the engine output to 101 bhp—a healthy pump of 17 bhp more than the naturally aspirated 1.2 litre engine of the standard Baleno. The torque too, has been scaled up from 115Nm to 150Nm, which you will appreciate if you have ever struggled to reverse your petrol Swift up any L-shaped inclination.
The Baleno RS’s main competitor, and the only other petrol hatchback to have a turbocharger in India, is the Polo GT TSI, the German car which costs a nominal Rs 50,000 more than the Rs. 8.69 lakh sticker price of the Baleno RS (Delhi). You need to stare hard to tell...
