Let me preface this post by saying that the following views are my own and in no way mean offense to anyone. And I least expect to get into arguments. (I'm a moderator for an investing website, trust me
). At the very least, all our experiences are our own and no one can deny that.
In my view, Maruti and Hero are two companies that have played on and captured customer sentiment. They've cashed in on their early-mover advantage (a long time ago now, I know) and have been able to maintain their status quo ever since. They set up shop far and wide throughout the country. And made their service centers accessible as well. That's been their strongest point.
On the other hand, new entrants, as and when they came in, were facing these behemoths and couldn't compete even with competitive products, and in many cases superior. Localization and all. Examples being Yamaha, Kawasaki, VW, Ford, et cetera, that could never compete with Maruti on price, but their owners know how much they love their cars/bikes.
In my view, Maruti has almost always short-changed its customers, and this one's no different. The S-Presso appears a car made for the sake of making it, nothing more, just another name in the line-up. Don't get me wrong, but the first-generation Swift, Ritz and S-Cross are a few examples where they've given the market a good product at a reasonable price. And lately, Ignis and Baleno, both VFM and possess those nice peppy engines. On the other hand, their cars were costlier and less equipped (read features) than their counterparts. It's only now (read Baleno onwards) that they've stepped up their game on this front, but still a ways to go vis-a-vis Hyundai and others.
As many have stated already, while a lot of their variants appear in the list, they're really hard to find at the dealers. My personal experience: back in 2013, the sales guy tried really hard to push a Swift VDi when I had already booked a Ritz ZDi for 7.2 lacs on-road. Says something along the lines of "Airbags, ABS, defogger, rear wash & wipe are all overrated saar. How many people use them? Ritz has a booking period of 1 month and these discounts won't apply when your car arrives. Why don't you get the VDi we have in the lot now? You'll get it at the same price as the Ritz ZDi." So what did I do? I canceled the booking and bought a Ford TDCi Titanium at 6.4 lacs on-road, a Yellow display car that had run 250 kms. Sad that I had to let it go because of a bad left knee.
On the service cost front, I think it is a myth (at least from personal experience so far, especially because I don't want to get into arguments) that Maruti's service costs are lower than their competitors. Recently, I accompanied my friend to drop his Alto for a routine service at a Maruti ASC. They gave an estimate of 8.8K for a 20K-run Alto, including WA/WB. Now I've spent a total of 12K on my 2-year old 43K run Tiago XZA in 7 visits. It's due for a service at 45K kms, and the cost should be somewhere around 5-6K at the max. Not bad, no?
Maruti's main selling point is resale value, which obviously depends on the availability of parts and service centers. To me, if I buy a good product, I really don't want to buy it because I want to sell it after a few years. I'm just looking forward to a good experience with it.
P.S.: On the point of not bashing Maruti or S-Presso for how it looks, I'm sure a lot of you have read what people said about Ritz, that "though it's more practical than a Swift and all, it looks like someone kicked it from the behind; that's why I bought a Swift." I'll just leave it at that.