A-Star: Maruti Suzuki's new launch

India's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki is betting big on its new offering - A-Star. This made in India car may just add some excitement to Maruti's falling sales.

In the last few months, Maruti's small car sales haven't been good. In fact, the real growth drivers have been in the A-3 segment - with the A-Star, Maruti is hoping to take on Hyundai i10.

For India's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India, sales of the Maruti 800 fell by about 18% in the April to October period. Even the A2 segment which has cars like the Alto, Zen and WagonR saw a mere 2.5% growth.

The real growth drivers have been SX4, DZire and Swift. This segment saw a growth of 37% in the same period. Maruti A-Star is the fifth global model from Maruti Suzuki to be launched in less than 40 months. The car has an all new 3 cylinder, 1 litre K series engine that gives a power of 67 hp. That is more than Zen and Wagon R. A-Star claims to give an average of 19.6 km per litre.

The car comes in three variants and the base version has both power steering and AC unlike Hyundai i10 whose base version does not have power steering.

There's nothing very extraordinary and out of the world about the interiors if you compare it with i10 but what's disappointing is that it's more cramped than before.

A-Star will be made in 200 variants and exported to 150 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, Australia, and Africa. It will be exported under the name of Suzuki Alto and Suzuki Celerio.

Nissan also plans to market the same car under the name Nissan Pixo in Middle East and African markets. A-Star will also contribute to half of Maruti Suzuki's overall export target of 2 lakh units by 2011-12.