Maruti Wagon R: The Best Car for 9 Lakh
I test-drove the Wagon R1 petrol hatchback, both in the city and on the highway, and evaluated it against my requirements. I conclude that the Wagon R is an excellent car for a budget of 9 lakhs2. Maruti carefully chose the right things to include and to exclude, resulting in a spacious, comfortable car with few glaring flaws.
Here’s a detailed evaluation along multiple dimensions, where + is a strength, - is a weakness, and ± is a note.
± There’s no start / stop button. You have to take the key out of your pocket, put it into the steering column, and turn it.
- The headlights are halogen, not LED.
+ Wing mirrors are adjustable electrically, which is more precise than manual adjustment.
+ The gear lever doesn’t have a park position, only neutral. To park, you use the separate parking brake. This is simpler than other cars that have two redundant parking brakes: the gear lever can be put in park, plus there’s a dedicated parking brake.
± There’s no auto hold.
- There’s an idle start / stop system, but the AC’s cooling reduces, so turn this off.
+ The car comes with alloy wheels, better than the steel wheels my Ritz3 uses.
+ It shows the range, which is better than just showing the amount of fuel (that too in bars rather than liters) and forcing me to figure out how far it will go for each bar.
+ The boot is deeper and longer than that of my Ritz, resulting in a significantly great carrying capacity than the Ritz, which often requires me to put baggage on the rear seat, which in turn means fewer passengers.
+ The parcel tray is deeper.
Comfort
+ My stomach is not pressed too much.
+ There’s lots of headroom, to the point where it feels spacious and comfortable and puts me at ease, rather than feeling cramped and claustrophobic, which even some cars that cost four times as much as the Wagon R don’t get right.
+ There’s good legroom
- The seat height and thigh support aren’t adjustable
- The seat isn’t electrically adjustable.
- The steering wheel tilts but doesn’t telescope.
- The suspension isn’t smooth. I felt the undulations of the road.
- The engine has poor noise and refinement. First, noise: the cabin is not well insulated from the engine. You hear the engine roar, as if it’s right next to you. Most cars fare better. Second, leaving aside how loud it is, another factor is how it sounds, which is called refinement4: unlike my Ritz VXI from 2013, which sounds smooth even at mid RPMs, the Wagon R sounds tinny and cheap. Cheap only in absolute terms — for 9 lakh, it’s an awesome car!
Driving
The car has a 1.2-liter 4-cylinder naturally aspirated engine.
- The AMT is not as good as a DCT, CVT or torque converter. Unfortunately, an AMT is all you get with the Wagon R.
- When I press and hold the accelerator at a constant level, it accelerated, then stopped accelerating for a while, then again accelerated.
- When I tried to accelerate significantly, there was a big jerk. I wasn’t demanding high acceleration from the car — I didn’t floor it. But the car had to downshift by 2 gears, to the 2nd gear at 50 or 60! That’s a low gear for a high speed, and it shows how weak the engine is. No other car I test-drove downshifts so much. Most cars would downshift one gear in this situation.
- In most other cars, if you want smooth acceleration, you’ll get it instantly5. By contrast, the Wagon R has a lag even to transition from coasting to gentle, smooth acceleration.
+ When I eased off after the significant acceleration, it jerked back.
- When I coasted to a stop, the deceleration was uneven.
- The maximum acceleration of the car is low compared to high-performance cars like the Creta or the Seltos, to say nothing of the Taigun/Kushaq.
- As a result, when driving on the highway, I ended up flooring it often on the Wagon R, which I rarely do on these high-performance cars, since they’d rocket forward.
- Even when floored, the Wagon R doesn’t thrill. If you’re a spirited driver, this isn’t the car for you. It’s a good way to get from A to B, but not to experience the joy of driving.
+ The AMT is much better than a manual since it’s consistent, while a human driver makes mistakes like switching to the wrong gear, lugging the engine, having jerky acceleration or engine braking causing occupants’ heads to jerk backward or forward, stalling the engine, spinning the wheels, having too little acceleration because of being in too high a gear… As an experienced driver, I don’t make some of the above mistakes, but I do make some of the other mistakes, even if infrequently. By contrast, the computer in an AMT is always consistently mediocre, which is better than the alternative of often being good but sometimes worse, since it’s the worse moments that people (including me as the driver) remember. So, if you drive a manual, the AMT will be a significant upgrade.
- The tiny width of the car, less wide than my Ritz, let me safely squeeze through gaps in traffic.
+ It shows the current gear. As a curious geek, I like to observe how an automatic system works.
+ The Wagon R was able to handle some speed breakers at 40 kph, which many cars that cost twice as much as the Wagon R can’t.
Cooling
- No climate control. You have to constantly keep adjusting the AC.
- The AC is weak, and needs to be run at 3 with the heat / cool dial turned all the way to blue even when it’s overcast. No other car has such a weak AC
- Single zone AC
- You can’t start the AC remotely using the app, so that the car cools down by the time you get in.
- The glovebox isn’t cooled, if you want to put some water bottles for a trip in the summer heat.
- No ventilated seats.
- No rear window sunshades
± No sunroof.
Digital features
+ CarPlay, wired only.
- No USB-C port.
+ The 12V port supports 120W. This is enough to fast-charge even a laptop.
- 3.5mm input, but it’s outdated.
+ Steering-mounted controls to Accept call, End call, and Voice (Siri or Google).
- The music system doesn’t sound good.
- You have to press hard for the infotainment system to register your touch. It’s not at all at the level of the 2009 iPhone or 2010 iPad.
Safety
+ Electronic stability control
- Only 2 airbags; no side protection
+ Electronic brakeforce distribution
+ Seat belt pretensioner with force limiters
- Seat belt height isn’t adjustable
- No auto headlamps or DRLs
- No lane keeping or blind spot monitoring
- No emergency brake assist
- No multi-collision brake
- No TPMS
The Wagon R scored 1 star in a Global NCAP crash test:
Marutis have always been unsafe. In fact, one of the comments on this video congratulates Maruti for not having scored zero stars!
Front passenger seat
- I can’t stretch my legs comfortably as much as in my Ritz.
+ Good headroom
+ The window is panoramic, because it’s tall. It’s nice to watch the world go by.
Rear seat
- The headroom is not ideal, but it doesn’t feel claustrophobic, and it’s better than most cars, even those double the price as the Wagon R. This is thanks to the flat roof. Most vehicles have a roof that slopes down, screwing the rear seat occupants. The Wagon R prioritises functionality over form, to its great credit. Most cars should do this.
- No AC vent or controls
- No power (whether USB-C, -A or 12V)
- I can’t stretch my legs comfortably.
+ The window is panoramic, because it’s tall. It’s nice to watch the world go by. This is something even cars twice as costly as the Wagon R get wrong often.
- The following happened in the 2022 Wagon R: the seat depth was less and my lower thigh was left hanging. This made it uncomfortable to the point where I’d sit in the front seat. I didn’t retest this in the 2024 Wagon R.
Improvements from the 2022 Wagon R
+ You hear less road noise, though the same engine noise.
+ There are less vibrations. In the 2022, I could feel vibrations from the road in the front passenger floorboard.
+ The engine now has 4 rather than 3 cylinders.
+ The 2022 rolled back when stopped on a steep slope. The 2024 has hill hold, so this shouldn’t happen, though I didn’t get to test it.
+ The 2024 handled speed breakers at 40 kph, which the 2022 couldn’t.
+ The music quality is less bad.
+ The infotainment system in the 2022 was terrible. It felt like Maruti went to China and purchased the absolute cheapest Android tablet for ₹2000 from the cheapest vendor and stuck it in the car. It didn’t feel in-built. The new one is significantly upgraded from terrible to meh.
+ The 2024 Wagon R looks sleeker than older models.
All said and done, I ended the test drive happy. The Wagon R is the best car you can buy for 9 lakh.
I test drove the 2024 top-end model (ZXI+ AGS) with an AMT. The Wagon R comes under Arena, Maruti’s sub-brand for budget cars.
On road, Bangalore.
Here’s how the Wagon R is an upgrade over my Ritz, where + means an upgrade and - means a downgrade:
+ AMT
+ Shows current gear
+ Electrical wing mirrors
+ Range indication
+ CarPlay
+ Bigger boot
+ Bigger parcel tray
+ Steering wheel tilts
- Less refined 3-cylinder engine
+ Steering controls to Accept call, End call and trigger Siri.
+ You can take calls using the car’s microphone!
+ Hill hold
+ Rear parking sensor
+ White
+ Rear seat headroom
Safety:
+ ABS
+ ESC
+ EBD
+ 2 airbags
+ 1-star rating vs presumably 0 for Ritz
When Apple upgraded the fan of the Macbook Pro, they made it sound less annoying though it was as loud. This is about the psychological perception, not about the volume. In the car world, this is called refinement.
In most cars, gentle, smooth acceleration doesn’t require a downshift, because the engine has enough power. Even the turbocharger doesn’t need to spool up for mild acceleration. So, mild acceleration is instant.