This Christmas, the Maruti WagonR will be completing two decades in India. The first-gen model was introduced almost 20 years ago, on 25 December 1999.
The Maruti WagonR has carried over the baton from the Maruti 800 to be consistently one of the top-selling 10 models for decades. Following its launch in January 2000, it took five years to reach the 1 lakh sales milestone. Fast-forward to 2017, over 2 million units were sold and the car was two generations old. At the beginning of this year, the third-gen model was launched in the country.
The Maruti WagonR was Maruti Suzuki’s answer to the Hyundai Santro and is pitted car against the same ever today. The tallboy hatchback is well-known for its roomy cabin, affordable price and great value for money. The third-gen model is bigger and offers an option for an engine bigger than its predecessors. It’s currently the cheapest model underpinned by the Heartect platform in India, a platform which underpins models as big as the Maruti Ertiga/Maruti XL6 as well.
Over three generations, Maruti Suzuki has sold over 24 lakh units of the WagonR now. The third-gen model alone has contributed 1 lakh units from this number, and that too within a short span of just 7 months. The company says that nearly 25% of customers buying the WagonR are repeat customers, highlighting the car’s high customer satisfaction level. It also boasts the fact that the BS-VI upgrades were rolled out for this model months before the deadline. The 1.0L engine variant was upgraded in June and the 1.2L engine variant was upgraded in November.
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In other developments related to the WagonR, Maruti Suzuki is developing its first EV using the platform of this model. It will unveil a concept version of this EV with the name ‘Futuro-E’ at Auto Expo 2020.
