Celerio has been Maruti’s latest salvo in the entry level B-segment and when A-Star and Estilo were big sales duds, Celerio has been a wiping hit!
The introduction of AMT (automated manual transmission) on passenger cars seems to have done the trick for the company. This is clearly reflected by the insane waiting periods of over 6 months at many places.
The backlog has piled up big time and Maruti is trying ways to clear it up as soon as possible. There are rumours that Magnetti Marelli (supplier of AMTs to Maruti) may be setting up a manufacturing line at Manesar so that it can speed up the process of AMT production. A lot more cars from Maruti are speculated to get AMT gearboxes and with the new impending demand, this seems to be a logical step.
Getting back to the Celerio, Maruti has now launched a new variant of the car, christening it Celerio ‘Green’ (Maruti uses ‘Green’ to signify CNG powered cars). The car is available only in the VXi trim.
Celerio Green CNG version pumps out 58PS of maximum power from the same 998cc three pot engine instead of the usual 68PS. According to Maruti’s claims, Celerio CNG can squeeze 31.79km for every kilogram of CNG which makes it one of the most fuel efficient CNG cars in the country. So with the higher mileage and lower CNG costs, it should be a very cheap car to run.
Celerio CNG Price:
Maruti has updated its website with the prices of Celerio CNG. They have priced the car at Rs 4,68,517 (ex-showroom, Delhi) which is about a whooping Rs 68,000 higher than the regular manual Celerio VXI and about Rs 25,000 costlier than the Celerio VXI with AMT. This makes us wonder what premium will they charge for the upcoming Celerio diesel!
Maruti is making the Celerio Green available only with a manual transmission and chances of it getting the AMT in the near future seems to be pretty bleak. With this Celerio CNG variant, Maruti plans to diverge sales from AMT to CNG, at least for the cities where it (CNG) is available.
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