Let’s get one thing clear straight away about Suzuki’s new supermini. It ain’t going to be making waves as a Wagon R replacement which many of you thought was on the cards but then that is the good thing, both for Maruti Suzuki and also for the consumer who wants a more family-oriented large hatchback. Great for Maruti Suzuki because it allows the product planners to move the Wagon R into a newer perch and position in the market

(think taxi or utility) and at the same time the firm’s premium hatchback portfolio gets enhanced.

It is this portfolio enhancement which is pretty noteworthy because ever since the company began to pack in small minis after small minis with just marginal increments in space and equipment to swamp the majority of the A2 segment, the new Ritz is the familyoriented offering which joins the Swift in the premium hatch segment. And there is no doubt that where the Swift is the iconic personalized car for the sporty individual, the Ritz clearly is family-focused.

The large hatchback segment is proliferating and Maruti Suzuki being the small car segment leader has cleverly engineered the Ritz to be bang on the money keeping in mind its likely rivals already on the market as well as those which it will have to deal with in the coming month! Already the Swift encounters competition in the form of the Hyundai i20 and the Skoda Fabia at the upper end of the spectrum while others like the brilliantly conceived Tata Indica Vista resides along side it. The Ritz is expected to be placed just around the Swift but with a choice of a brand new petrol motor and the same DDIS oil burner as in the Swift, this is the car which strengthens Maruti Suzuki’s hand when it would come to squaring off against the Hyundai i20 right now and the Honda Jazz plus the Fiat Grande Punto which are expected next month.

The Ritz is not what this Suzuki is known as elsewhere in the world, Splash being the name given to what the Japanese firm terms it as a “worldwide mini-wagon”. I think that this is the single biggest detail which shows how far Suzuki has kept its Japanese styling idiosyncrasies in the deep freeze and adopted contemporary European design to pervade every bit of its thought process. It wasn’t that the car had to also do duty as a badge-engineered Opel Agila in Europe, but clearly having a European-focused design and dynamic capability has helped the Japanese small car maker to keep the cash registers ticking.

So what is the Ritz all about? It has good pedigree to start with, built on a slightly sliced Swift platform and with newer and optimized underpinnings for the family-mover application, this is a car which is very much in the “tall boy” mould without standing out as a bread box (for example the Wagon R). Take the style cues as well with more than a hint of a scaled down Mercedes A-class on to which has been morphed an Audi gaping mouth grille and suddenly you know that this couldn’t be a Wagon R replacement. Take in the funky vertical rear tail lights, the massaged wheel arches, the pronounced waist crease plus the character crease linking the front and rear wheel arches and you get a car which is a damn sight better than any previous tall boy from any car maker!

Having said that it is built on a chopped Swift floorpan, this means that the Ritz rides on a 2360mm wheelbase - 30mm shorter than the Swift, but interestingly is 20mm longer than the Swift at 3715mm. And, being a stylish “tall boy,” means that it tends to have a larger profile than the sporty Swift. What all this translates into is a car which has a more upright and comfy seating position with good space for four adults and excellent ingress and egress at the rear making it a breeze for kids and oldies.

The good news continues with a funky interior, now almost a Suzuki stand point as we have come to expect from the Swift onwards and this time the dual tone upholstery is colour coded to the exterior paint shade. This dual tone approach also takes in the dashboard and the door-pads to provide a very funky yet pleasing ambience to the overall cabin. The trademark retro tachopod (honest that is Suzuki’s way of describing the stand apart rev counter) stands atop the dashboard while the most obvious form of instrumentation firmly in the driver’s line of vision is the large speedometer with a digital odo and tell tale lights on its outer circumference clearly indicate Euro-thought. The clean uncluttered central console with its sweeping gait is impressive and the high mounted gear shifter make up the business end of the cockpit.

If there is one clear detail which will help Maruti Suzuki in its fight in this newer and burgeoning segment of the Indian car market, it would have to be the twin engine options this car comes with. There is a brand new and very well engineered petrol engine which is BS IV compliant, displaces 1197cc (just right for the government’s small car beneficial tax structure) from its four pots, is made of aluminium alloy, has double overhead cams working four valves per cylinder, an offset-crankshaft, drive-bywire throttle control and many other goodies to save both weight and friction. This translates into an engine delivering 83 PS at 6000rpm and 113Nm of torque at 4500rpm. Surely this is a powerplant much better than that which does duty in the petrol-engined Swift and it is but a matter of time before the ageing 1.3-litre unit from the Esteem saloon is consigned to history.

The second engine option is of course the very same Fiat-inspired 1.3-litre DDIS unit which also powers the Swift and judging by the fact that the Ritz would be – or ought to be – placed and priced slightly lower than the Swift in the Suzuki portfolio, the oil burner option would enable its maker to not just outshine the i20 and the Fabia but also comfortably allow it to dictate terms to the Honda Jazz and the Fiat Grande Punto. Both engines are mated to 5-speed manual transmissions and I suspect that Suzuki probably lost a trick in the game by not offering an automatic transmission.

The Ritz rides well given its firmly damped set-up. Sprinting to speed is easy and also has a hint of sportiness but this isn’t a car which can be thrown into corners like the Swift. The car does have a tendency to display quite a degree of body roll given its soft compliant ride feel but even then it continues to deliver loads of grip from its 185/70 R14 tyres. The steering is precise but could do with a tad more feel but thanks to its nippy attributes it is a highly maneuverable lil’ number.

The car will be launched nationwide tomorrow and it will be interesting to see whether Suzuki has got the pricing right. Remember that this isn’t a model which it will be exporting, at least not in the large numbers as it does with the A-Star so expect this to be more Indiafocused to take on impending strong rivals expected to storm the large hatch party. Just as well because the Ritz could just be the most important cog to get the premium hatchback segment galloping.