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Thanks to the Team-BHP fan (he prefers to remain anonymous) who sent this information in. Heartfelt gratitude for sharing it with other enthusiasts via this page!

A Maruti Suzuki insider has claimed that the company has 'successfully' tested the Ciaz sedan with a 1.5-litre diesel engine. Maruti is reportedly planning to plonk larger engines in the Ciaz to make it more competitive against its direct rivals and the claimed tests appear to be the first step in this direction.

The Ciaz is currently available with a 1.3-litre, four-cylinder diesel engine which is rated at 89 BHP and 200 Nm of torque. This is the smallest and the least powerful engine in the segment. While the Ciaz is performing well in India, customers have constantly and repeatedly complained about the car's engines being underpowered. The 1.3-litre power plant has also started to feel old and outdated, and in the 89 BHP tune, it suffers from a significant amount of turbo lag as well. Moreover, since the engine is sourced from Fiat, Maruti has to pay hefty royalties to the Italian automaker. This eats into Maruti's profit share.

Therefore, the company has decided to replace the 1.3-litre engine with a larger and more powerful 1.5-litre unit. Output figures haven’t been revealed as yet. This power plant has been developed in-house by Suzuki, which helps eliminate the need for any royalty payments. In addition to the larger diesel engine, Maruti is reported to be working on a 1.5-litre petrol mill as well. This engine is likely to replace the current 1.4-litre unit. Both the new engines are expected to be launched in the Ciaz in 2018.

Link to Team-BHP News

This could be a serious game changer in this segment. If Maruti can put in some good engines, both petrol and diesel, it can continue ruling the segment perhaps in a more dominant manner. Currently the City's petrol and Verna's diesel engines are superior but if Ciaz gets something comparable, it's game on!

Good move i guess, since the Suzuki is moving up the value chain in india. So for them to sell more premium offerings priced 10-20 lakhs, they need to really offer engines that offer ample torque and 100+ BHP.

It will be interesting to see how they manage the NVH levels, as we saw in case of Honda. Also I wonder how much time we should wait to see the long term performance of this engine.

If they have done it with Ciaz, then surely they would have done it with the SCross as well.

Brilliant move from MSIL. With FIAT's relunctance to localize the 1.6 Multijet, this was the best way forward, indeed.

Hopefully, this new 1.5 matches the refinement levels of the Multijet range used in other Maruti Suzuki cars, because as we all know - their first diesel attempt in the Celerio has been nothing short of a disaster. Two additional cylinders should help, but controlling NVH levels of a diesel in lightweight Japanese cars require much more than just that!

More than their issues with profitability of the 1.3, I feel the biggest driving factor was the difficulty in procuring the 1.6 for cars like the Ciaz and SCross which absolutely need such a bigger engine.

As we know - the 1.6 diesel engine and the 6 speed gearbox for it were imported and hence asked a huge premium compared to the regular 1.3 which is locally made by MSIL under licence and also procured from FIAT in India. The import also meant that the service costs for these variants would have been higher than the others, sure to tarnish Maruti's affordability image in the long run.

With FIAT skipping the 1.6 and concentrating only on localizing the 2.0 currently, it makes all the more sense for Maruti to move on to their own range, even if parameters like NVH are compromised a bit initially.

The petrol 1.5 is a bad move in the Ciaz though. They should bring the 1.0 boosterjet in the Ciaz which takes the fight right to the City. Moreover, the increased volumes will help them start local assembly of the Boosterjet engine soon as well.

However, the 1.5 might be better suited to the SCross than a 1.0 turbo. That could be a reason for developing this engine for Ciaz and later made available to SCross as well.

Completely agree.

There are two issues with the Ciaz, and decent engines will fix the more pressing of these.

Ciaz being on the lighter side, performance will be far more bang for buck than the euro competition, far more satisfying to the enthusiast.

I recently drove a Ciaz VXI AMT, and am quite impressed by the ride and space. The interiors look good even if the plastics don't feel good at all. Compared to my Rapid, the doors are not weighted and sprung well enough to give the impression of solidity. They feel as though a light breeze will blow them shut on an unwary passenger.

Recent sales are clear however that people don't really care if the build is light and plastics cheap as long as it's a Maruti.

Maruti might be taking a leaf out of Honda's book here. Despite being criticized for its poor NVH, Honda's diesel engine turned the City's sales around completely. As you've said, Maruti can compromise on NVH for now as long as the engine specs are as good as the competition. They may also have separate states of tune for the Brezza, Swift, and Dzire, and a higher state for the SCross and Ciaz.

The slew of petrol engines that Suzuki was development in below link:

Most engines discussed like the 1.0L and 1.4l boosterjet that were launched and guess the 1.2 and 1.5 petrol engines are the ones pending for launch that we are seeing now!

Link

This turns out to be great news for all Ciaz fans. Presently, the price difference between the City and Ciaz is around 1.5 lakhs (at an average) variant to variant. The most influential factor for this price gap is the engine size (for petrol) and SHVS technology (for diesel). Now that MSIL has decided to increase the Engine size to bring it at par with the Competition, it would be interesting as what pricing strategy MSIL would adopt to keep the competitors at bay. With increase in Engine size it would also be interesting to know how much influence it would have on the USP of MSIL viz., Fuel Efficiency. In my opinion, Fuel Efficiency was the prime reason as why the 1.6 Ltrs petrol mill from SX4 did not find a place in the Ciaz. Perhaps, MSIL would reserve the larger engine options only for the top most variant. Keeping the fingers crossed.

On face of it, this is a good move, there is no point in depending on third parties for critical components of your product (read - engine). Yet, even if they have successfully tested the engine and might use it in Ciaz and may be in SCross in due course; the principal driver for 1.3 MJD in MSIL stable is hatchback and CS segments together contributing about 80% of the overall MJD volumes sold in India.

Also, it is important to note that 1.3 MJD Euro VI compliant engine is ready and being used across multiple regions / FCA markets in other countries and it will be brought in India around 2019 just before the Indian market migrates to Euro VI norms. Thus one should not see this move as something that will trigger sunset of 1.3 MJD in India.

With local production of 1.3 and 2.0 MJD engines in India, FCA can continue to make money as the 2.0 MJD will start catering to the SUV segment, thus its just a segment movement as the Indian market is also graduating to high performance & powerful engines and thus it is not a redundant move, instead the company is using its wisdom of making JEEP a success and also ensuring that the overall production cost of JEEP is contained by indirect sales of engines (2.0 MJD) to other players. Tatas have already signed MOU with FCA for 2.0 MJD.

Cheers !

Quite sure the 1.5 petrol referred to in the opening post will be a NA engine.

Maruti will be wary of introducing turbo-petrol engines in India. These tend to be sensitive to driving styles and can guzzle fuel if driven with a heavy foot.

Maruti knows our market well, and will stick to NAs for now, I think.

I hope they combine this launch with the face lift. Might be a good replacement option for my 10 year old Honda. Will they sell both engines at different level of trims or will they stop the smaller engined Ciaz? I think they can sell both at different price points. The bigger engines will remove the Ciaz's major drawback which they need to overcome since Hyndai is readying its Verna.

Agreed on both points. With the competition continuing with NA engines (Honda, Hyundai), there's no real incentive for Maruti to invent a whole new offering. That would be very unlike Maruti who are obviously happy to watch some other company launch a new segment, gauge the response, and then create a killer! Case in point includes: Baleno, Brezza, Ciaz.

Nopes. Sorry, but I have to disagree. Since you are talking diesels there, the book in this particular case has been written by Maruti. :D

The petrol-diesel split in sales of the current-gen City is 61% : 39%, as announced by Honda during the 2.5 lakh sales milestone last month. Whereas for Ciaz, the split has been 32% : 68% as of data available till 2016.

So Ciaz has been selling a lot more diesels than Honda, which still relies on the petrol to bring in majority numbers. The 1.5 diesel will only further strengthen their lead, if the engine is acceptable.

The real fight between these two will start when Ciaz will get the 1.5 NA petrol / 1L Boosterjet engines. As I mentioned above, I feel they should go ahead with the 1L turbo and take the fight away from the 1.5 iVTec, rather than trying to play catchup with a 1.5 VVT.

Can't Maruti manufacture 1.6 Fiat engine under their license as they do for 1.3 Mutijet? It may be little costly affair for Maruti but its a proven engine with great power. People will definitely like it and i am sure Ciaz will sell more with that engine. Not sure if there is any issue in doing that.

Hello all ! I just have one query, is this engine a downsized version of Fiat's 1.6 litre Multijet diesel engine or it's a newly developed engine by Suzuki.

If the latter is the answer then I think we can expect Maruti to price this car aggressively.
Then Maruti also has an option to ditch the Fiat's
1.3 litre MJD from Ciaz .

Maruti Suzuki is paying a royalty to Fiat for every DDiS engine sold. 80% of Fiat's revenues in the last year came from royalties for their engines. One way for Maruti Suzuki to price cars even more competitively will be to have their own diesel engine. That is what they are trying to achieve with the 1.5 Diesel
The 1.2 turbo petrol and 1.5 Turbo petrol have not been in discussions for long now. The 1.5 petrol they were planning to plonk was the same 1.5 NA engine that is imported from India to Indonesia
Unfortunately what you mention below is not true. Fiat were initially approached by Maruti and Tata to build a 1.5 diesel engine and they were about to start re-engineering the 1.6 diesel or using that as a base to build a 1.5 engine. Maruti and Tata later changed plans leaving Fiat to abandon the 1.5 local diesel engine plans

It could be better than the Multijet as well. See Hyundai has made an engine more refined that Multijet in the form of their 1.6 CRDI. Let us not compare the Celerio here as that was too ambitious in the form of a 2 cylinder diesel engine
Agree. Or the 1.4 Boosterjet in future to be even better