Maruti Vitara Brezza review, road test

Diesel, compact SUV, Maruti. The ingredients are all there but do they make for the perfect recipe? We find out.

Published on Jun 02, 2016 07:00:00 AM

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Vertical and upright stance, high ground clearance lend the Brezza its SUV credentials.

Dashboard design is devoid of design flair,is functional and build quality is average.

Maruti has played safe with the Vitara Brezza’s design by giving it very straightforward and conservative proportions. There are more straight lines than swooping curves and the overall shape even borders on being boxy. To pack in as much space as possible within a sub-four-metre length, the design had to be more functional than stylish. It’s unmistakably an SUV too, sitting on 16-inch rims housed in large, squared-off wheel arches and with a 198mm ground clearance.

What grabs your attention are the details and there are lots of interesting elements on the Brezza. What makes it stand out is the combination of colours of the dual-tone paint scheme which also gives a floating roof effect. In fact, if you take the blackened pillars, there are three colours at play! It’s not easy executing a dual-tone paint job on a mass scale because the car requires two passes in the paint shop and has to properly masked.

Other interesting design elements include the squared-off wheel arches, bull-horn styled LED front running lights (there are no bi-xenons like on the Baleno), rear light guides and a thick chrome bar that dominates the grille. There is also a scuff plate for the front and rear bumpers and cladding on the lower edges of the doors. The thick chrome strip above the rear number plate with ‘Vitara Brezza’ embossed looks quite loud but it’s something many owners will like. On the whole, the Brezza’s styling isn’t flamboyant but interesting enough to appeal to a wide range of buyers, which was, no doubt, the intention of Maruti designers.

The Vitara Brezza is the first Suzuki that’s been conceived in India with a lot of inputs from Maruti engineers but it’s based on Suzuki’s global C-platform that also underpins the European Suzuki Vitara. This platform, with its 2,500mm-long wheelbase, was chosen as it was the best starting point for packaging a spacious, grounds-up SUV. Also carried over is the packaging for four-wheel-drive which is an option in the European market but in India, the Vitara Brezza is likely to remain a strictly front-wheel-drive car only. One benefit of using a global platform is that it brings a certain level of crashworthiness, which explains its not so light 1,195kg (for the top variant) weight. Maruti claims that the Brezza will meet the Indian offset and side impact crash tests that come into effect from 2017.