Maruti Ciaz long term review, second report

Normally, choosing a long-term car from our fleet is easy. Unless there’s a new car I haven’t driven enough, I naturally gravitate to what’s fastest and most fun. But not this month. The combination of a stiff lower back and Mumbai’s bombed-out monsoon roads had me searching for a car with a good ride and a supportive driver’s seat.

Tata’s Zest and Maruti’s Ciaz are pretty neck and neck when it comes to ride, especially at low speeds. The Maruti, however, clearly has the nicer seat. It holds you quite well over the bumps, lower back support is spot on and it is reasonably wide too. The cushion is a bit hard, but that’s only something you notice initially.

What I’ve also discovered over the weeks I’ve been driving it in and around Mumbai, is that Maruti’s engineers seem to have done everything in their power to improve the ride at low speeds. The big tyres help, there’s plenty of compliance in the springs and this allows the Ciaz to put down a layer of cushioning between the wheels and the road. What I now also find, now that my back is slightly better, is that the Maruti Ciaz remains flat over the bumps even if I up the speed. And the suspension works really silently too, which means I now barely slow down for the regular bad patches I encounter on my daily route to office.