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To cost 17 pc more than petrol version

DIESEL VARIANT: Mr Jagdish Khattar (left), Managing Director and CEO, Maruti Udyog Ltd, with Mr S. Oishi, Director, Sales and Marketing, at the launch of Swift Diesel in the Capital on Wednesday. - Ramesh Sharma

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New Delhi Jan. 24 With an aim to garner a chunk of the fast growing domestic diesel car market, Maruti Udyog Ltd on Wednesday launched the diesel variant of its premium compact car Swift.

The 1.3-litre, diesel-powered model will be priced from Rs 4,68,000 (introductory price), 17 per cent more than the base model of its gasoline version. The higher-end version will cost Rs 4,96,511, said Mr Jagdish Khattar, Managing Director, Maruti Udyog said.

"Demand for diesel cars is growing in India and Suzuki Motor Corp and Maruti have made major investments in diesel facilities to serve this customer need," Mr Khattar said.

Diesel engines

Maruti used to sell some diesel-powered models until 2005. It stopped selling the Zen and Esteem models with diesel engines in 2005, after its agreement to import diesel engines from Peugeot SA ended.

Maruti, which can make 100,000 diesel engines a year now, will further start exporting the engines to Suzuki's Hungarian unit in the next few months, Mr Khattar said.

The company began making the diesel engines this month through a joint venture with Suzuki. The engines are being manufactured using technology from Fiat SpA and Adam Opel GmbH at a new factory in Manesar in Haryana.

Suzuki and Maruti will together invest more than Rs 2,500 crore in the factory until 2010, by when the capacity at the unit will be expanded to 300,000 engines.

Maruti further plans to introduce two cars in the next fiscal year, Mr Khattar added. He reiterated the current year's sales target of 630,000 units, during which it would export 40,000 cars.

The company is also gearing up to change its declining fortunes in exports with the launch of a new model for Europe by 2008-09. "We will introduce a new model by 2008-09 for the European market," Mr Khattar said.

He said the company was looking at exporting about one lakh units of the car, which will mark its re-entry to Europe.

By 2008-09, the company was confident of having a total export figure of two lakh units, he said.

Maruti's current decline in exports was primarily due to its decision to stop shipping to Europe in June 2005. "We had stopped exporting to Europe as we needed to focus on the domestic market," he said, adding that whatever numbers MUL currently achieved were all exports to non-European countries.

"Next year, we are confident exports will be over 50,000 units," Mr Khattar added. With the proposed new car and committed supply of 50,000 units to Nissan along with non-Europe exports, MUL is confident that its exports will touch two lakh units by 2008-09, he said.

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