Good SUV, great price

There is a show on discovery travel and living called Extreme Makeover where a willing but ordinary subject is taken off the street and gets her own Cinderella story. The makeover at Maruti Udyog (MUL) has not been quite as dramatic, but it has been radical, nonetheless. And its new flagship model, the Grand Vitara Sports-Utility, is more proof of that, visibly sharing design cues with the Swift and the sx4 both inside and out.

Yet, there is something about the new Grand Vitara (labelled Escudo in some markets abroad) that disappoints. The old, dull-looking Vitara drank so much petrol that you almost needed to own your personal oil well if you wanted to buy one. Yet, when you just touched the accelerator pedal, that car moved in a way that belied its weight. The 2.7 litre v6 on the old Vitara, with a massive 166 horsepower, was one of the best engines available in India in terms of sheer performance. Driving one was expensive, ridiculously so, but great fun.

And while the new car looks a lot better and has far more functional interiors, it wheezes off the line in comparison to the old car. Well, don't get us wrong, the 1995cc v4 does a great job; it has 119 horsepower, more than enough to move around the city, and promises to deliver fantastic economy. The final figures are not in as yet, but you're looking at numbers around the 10 km/litre mark. Not bad for a car with permanent all-wheel drive.

The Grand Vitara also has an option to switch over to four-wheel low-ratio-something you need to drive through sand or big inclines, and again, the car performs well. In fact, in its off-road duties, the new Vitara outshone the old one, but then again, with the old one you just powered your way out of trouble.

Even more impressively, this car is priced at Rs 13.8 lakh (manual version, ex-Delhi, Rs 5 lakh cheaper than the previous model), making it the cheapest car in its class, Rs 2 lakh cheaper than the 4x4 version of the Ford Endeavour and over Rs 4 lakh cheaper than the Honda CR-V. Fair enough, the Ford is diesel-powered and the CR-V looks stunning, but make no mistake, this is a fantastic value-for-money SUV.

Two Popular Cars Get Makeovers for 2008

The companies have not announced them yet, but since model changes occur almost simultaneously in India and the rest of the world these days, here are images of the new Toyota Corolla (right) and Honda Accord (left) that are due to hit the Indian market in 2008. The Corolla needed a makeover to compete with the hot-selling Civic and now looks like a smaller version of the Camry.

The Accord is getting a makeover in the US, but since Honda India imports parts for the car from foreign markets, the Indian model should also be changed.