Maruti Suzuki Transforms the Swift into the Ertiga MPV for t

As India's best-selling brand with nearly 700,000 deliveries and over 40 percent of the market in 2011, Maruti Suzuki wants to cover all the important segments, including Multi-Purpose Vehicles or MPVs, which currently account for around 10 percent of the country's total car sales.

For this purpose and after adding a tiny boot to the Swift to create the Dezire sedan, Maruti Suzuki has now turned the hatchback model into an MPV and called it the new Ertiga.

Designed by Suzuki in Japan but manufactured locally in India, the Ertiga was launched onto the market this week.

At 4,265mm long and 1,685mm tall with a 2,740mm wheelbase, the Ertiga is 415mm longer, 155mm taller and has a 330mm longer wheelbase than the five-door Swift hatchback. The two cars share the same width at 1,695mm.

The stretched platform allowed Suzuki to add a third row of seats making room for seven passengers.

In India, buyers have a choice of two four-cylinder engines. These include a 1.4-liter petrol unit with 94hp (95PS) at 6,000 rpm and 130Nm (96 lb-ft) of peak torque at 4,000 rpm that returns a fuel consumption of 6.2lt/100km (37.7mpg US), and a 1.3-liter turbo diesel with 89hp (90PS) at 4,000 rpm and 200Nm (148 lb-ft) at 1,750 rpm that consumes 4.8lt/100km (48.9mpg US).