From a low-key launch of the new facelifted Ritz a few days back, there were many questions left unanswered which Maruti did not prefer to answer.
The most important among them was “What happens to Ritz Petrol now?” since Maruti specifically mentioned that it is the diesel that has been facelifted along with an introduction of the top of the line ZDI version. However, dealers have the prices of Ritz petrol. They haven’t received any new Ritz petrol is a different story though!
Now, when we logged into Maruti Ritz official website, there is a clear demarcation of ‘Diesel’ and ‘Petrol’ as displayed in the screenshot below. When you click on ‘Petrol’ you are navigated to the older Ritz with details specific to the petrol variant. And if you click on ‘Diesel’..well you land upon a ‘Service Unavailable‘ error message page. But hopefully it would be navigated to the new facelifted diesel page which was working fine earlier.
This makes things clear that FOR NOW, petrol Ritz buyers would be provided with the older Ritz and only the diesel buyers will have the luxury of owning the latest facelifted model. This makes us wonder about the possibilities which compelled Maruti to take such a step:
- They have a lot of Petrol Ritzs lying at stockyards and they want to dispense them off before they launch Ritz petrol in new version.
- With the festive season approaching fast, they want to concentrate fully on the most selling diesel variant, no matter what the demand for Ritz petrol may be!
- Ritz petrol is selling so lesser figures that it hardly makes sense to upgrade it to newer looks and engines. This, we feel is the least possible!
It would be interesting to see how would potential Ritz petrol buyers react to this and it would be cleared in Ritz sales figures for the coming months.
Maruti is also offering discounts upto Rs 45,000 on the petrol Ritz. Along with the regular discounts, we also sense stock-clearance in this offer.
However, make no mistake (until Maruti plays a different ball game), there is definitely a facelifted Ritz petrol coming. The only question is, “When?“. Looking at the circumstances, we feel Maruti would not launch it anytime around the festive season and we expect it to make a presence after Diwali or possibly next year.
There is also an Automatic Ritz expected and since it would in Petrol, let’s see when does Maruti plan to bring it in.
If you are interested in the new Ritz, we have taken it for a small drive and have posted a quick review of the car. You can also know about the changes in the new Ritz vis-a-vis the older one here.
Also, the chief nemesis Ford is also readying a facelift for its big seller Figo and you can click here to view the latest spy pics of the car.
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