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Fair enough jinojohnt. I was not referring about the relative width of the A-star to Alto. A-star looks wider than the Alto because it is actually wider by about 125mm!

What I said was, if MSIL had given the A-star a wraparound tailgate or a rear windshield which is not caved in, the car would have definitely looked wider than it is already.

I would like to see the A-Star to be stretched like this (to 3700 / 3800 mm), keeping the width the same as 1600mm. This will give enough space in rear and boot.

The price will get increased then, and currently it already is overpriced. So after the stretch maruti might price it more and it may enter the ritz territory and again no one will buy it.
It may also look a bit weird with a long length and less breadth.

One of my friends bought an i10 Asta Automatic recently (on-road 6.5 Lakhs approx). He actually liked the A-star Automatic better, but was put off by the huge waiting periods. Are you listening, Maruti?

scuderiaferrari mentioned on his A*-AT thread that he was told by Pratham Motors, Blore that A*-AT is now available off the shelf. If this is true, it is indeed awesome.

One of the major cons of A-Star that everyone mentions is the lack of space in the rear. The front is OK, but the rear is practically useless for sitting, is the common refrain. I thought we need to put numbers to this and get a proper picture. More so, when I saw an i10 and A* parked side-by-side in our office parking and visually, both looked the same to me in size - infact the A-Star seemed a wee bit wider.

So, took out a tape and measured params related to rear-seat comfort for both the cars and this is what I have.


- It was shocking to see that both cars have the exact same interior breadth. Meaning seating capacity is same

- Leg-room at rear is also more-or-less the same - a slight edge to i10. With the front-seat pushed all the way to the back, it was painful to sit in the rear of both cars.

- i10 has just 1-inch of headroom more at the centre

- at the sides, the i10 is much better. This is because while the i10 has an almost flat roof, the A-Star slopes to the sides. More comfy in the i10 for side-seaters.

So, what is the whole deal about space ? Are you getting any significant space by paying the extra moolah for the i10 ? IMO, No.

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Funny thing was, when I was doing the measurements, a colleague owning a Getz was with me and crowing about how spacious the Getz is, compared to puny cars like i10 and A*. For a lark, I thought it would be good to measure the Getz and the results stunned both of us. :Shockked:

- The Getz was just a couple of inches wider than A*/i10, though from exterior it looks a bigger car.
- Leg space was almost there with the i10 - just an inch or so more at best
- Head room was same as A* - just that since it also has a flat roof, the headroom was better at sides (unlike A*).

Colleague has stopped talking about the Getz. :D

supremeBaleno, i concur with your findings, the space inside both these cars are similar, plus or minus an inch or two. Space is comparable to the others in this segment. But Astar doesn't give that feeling of space inside to the occupants due to two main reasons - 1) the small rear windows and 2) the sloping roof. The rear seats are placed slightly higher though, so it doesnt feel claustrophobic at the back.

Advantage i10 is ingress and egress, its better in the i10 owing mainly to its tallboy design and higher seats.

Well Supremebaleno great finding but human mind is lot different and human perception differs a lot from actual results.

Instead of going in to measurement's and performance figures If I just take a layman view A Star does not look that big or good period and the buying decision for most people is made at this point.

Yes still A star sells and I assume that the buyers are of kind who compare / measure things up and take logical decisions rather then based on perception.

Perception works in lot of weired manner many times it is of brand image or size or just because your friend says so.
For example why people overpay for Sony in India because they think it is premium where as rest of the world think it is middle class. Similarly people buy run of mill watch brands elsewhere like Espirit at 4X the price of titan is again a perception.

Another reason for cramped feeling at rear could be the size of the rear door.

I observed this with Swift, Some of my friend's didnt like the rear space in Swift, so we got a Getz & Swift side by side & while the Getz surely had better space, the Swift wasn't as bad as people expected, it was then we observed that the rear door is relatively small making ingress & outgress slightly difficult than its competition(more so with the front seat pushed back)

One reason for AStar is branded as cramped is the weird position of AC vents. Vertically challenged drivers felt that the visibility is poor due to it.

Maruti has so many cars in the Rs.3-6L price range that some of them are bound to be less successful than others. A-star and Estilo are prime examples. Maybe we will get better answers if we ask "Why should A-star sell well?". For me, it doesn't have any real USP. Also it doesn't help that the A-star is positioned exactly between the largest selling and the 2nd largest selling car models in India.

I think the boot is the biggest spoil-sport. Its good enough only for handbags and purses.. Maybe a laptop as well :)

Absolutely spot on! I remember taking a test drive of the A-Star and was shocked to see how small the boot is! It does not help that the boot lid is small and the bumper is high, making the loading height inconvenient as well.

And as for the cramped interiors, I would say its the small rear doors that are the culprit.

Shame, because I found the car quite good to drive and a far better spiritual successor to the Zen than the current Estilo.

@Sankar, since you have both cars at home, am sure you know both cars inside out and can make out the space without a measuring-tape. :)

While the handbags/purses part is an exaggeration (meant in jest, I know), the boot is indeed small and a friend's Dad rejected the A-Star mainly due to the boot.

Agree about layman's purchase behaviour based on perception. But if we were to base our car-purchase on a layman's perspective, we would not be on tbhp, right ?

Too much of an India generalisation, IMO. Eg. a part of me thinks that Sony is superior to Korean brands like Samsung. So when I am looking for a product, I do the comparison of features/price etc, but always end up buying Samsung - because a part of me feels that the extra paid for Sony is not worth the so-called brand value/image. Maybe explains why I bought the Baleno over the NHC, though both were in my budget.

However, while I have no hesitation buying Korean white-goods, I can't bring myself to buying a Korean car - concerns about reliability & FE plays a role here I guess.

And BTW, we Indians do not really need to always follow what the "rest of the world" follows. We are entitled to our own opinion, which the rest-of-the-world might get around to following. A case in point being the rise in sales of small cars in the US, which was predominantly a big-car country. With rising fuel prices, FE has become important, which makes them go for small cars a la Indians. I remember that even till a few years ago, FE was a bad word, even on tbhp, when it came to deciding a car. But now with the Rs5 hike in petrol prices and more expected, this is an important parameter now, on par with or even more than biege interiors. :-)

That's where Maruti's marketing team failed.
The biggest USP of A-Star is it's driver oriented nature. As others have mentioned it's the actual successor to the old Zen. MS made a big mistake by branding the MR Wagon as the 'new Zen'. Instead this car should have been branded as the 'new Zen'. Under 5 lakhs OTR for the top-end variant, there is no other car to challenge A-star in terms of driver satisfaction. The car's appearance and branding are totally deceptive of it's true nature.