New Maruti Suzuki Wagon R Engines Not Yet BS6

The newly launched new Maruti Suzuki Wagon R has many a first to its credit - not least of which is its new wider track and bigger space. But also for the first time, Maruti Suzuki will sell the car in two engine variants: the existing K10 (1.0 litre, 3-cylinder) and a new addition to the model line up - the 1.2 litre K-12 (4-cylinder). But neither is BS6 ready at this stage. 

Also Read: Maruti Suzuki's BS6 Product Roll Out Plan

Speaking to carandbike, C V Raman, Senior Executive Director-Engineering, Maruti Suzuki says, "As far as BS6 development is concerned, we are working on all our products and definitely much before the deadline - because it is the date of sale (for the new regime to kick in April 2020). So we need to ensure that all products are there. And we have more than 50 variants - be it engine or vehicle. But we will ensure BS6 will be available to all our customers well before time." In fact, it was carandbike that had reported back in October 2018 that Maruti would be bringing the BS6 engines to market starting January 2020.

The Wagon R is now bigger than the outgoing version and has a more powerful engine variant too. 

So while the focus of the new engines on the new Maruti Suzuki Wagon R may not have been BS6, the company has worked hard at offering two specific attributes. The first is in response to customer feedback, and so the Wagon R now gets that bigger, more powerful engine variant. The second was to enhance the fuel efficiency of the previous model. The fuel efficiency of the outgoing Wagon R was 20.51 kmpl, and the team targeted a 10 per cent improvement. Says Raman, "We achieved 22.5 kmpl on the K10. But on the K12 engine, the customer also requires - besides performance - the fuel efficiency to also be good. And that's where we had to tweak some of the transmission parameters, in order to give a good acceleration feel, but not compromise too much on the fuel efficiency. And we were able to get 21.5 kmpl." 

Also Read: Maruti Suzuki Wagon R Launched In India. Prices And Other Details

The new-gen Wagon R is based on the Heartect platform

Maruti Suzuki says the previous generation car was not capable of the kind of flexibility the Heartect platform allows. And that is why it was even able to consider two engines. "When marketing told us what was required, we were able to build two engines into the new platform. The K series - K 10 and K12 - are both series production engines. We have tuned it for this vehicle to get better performance and fuel efficiency. It's a carry forward of our K12 engine" adds Raman. Of course, having two engines also gave Maruti a lot more flexibility in pricing. So while the K10 variants start at Rs. 4.19 lakh, the K12 tops off at Rs. 5.69 lakh ex-showroom.