2022 Maruti Grand Vitara: A VW Taigun owner shares his observations

I own a VW Taigun GT+ while my wife owns a Maruti Baleno AT.

BHPian tanu3000 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

This is my first post on the Maruti Grand Vitara thread here. To give you a background of our garage, I own a VW Taigun GT+ which I acquired a few months back (Replacing a 7 year old Polo 1.2 MPI). My wife owns a Maruti Baleno AT that she daily drives to her office in Peenya. We love both our cars for what they represent/provide (Taigun: Best safety & performance/price, Baleno: Perfect city car for Bangalore), and are aware of both their shortcomings (Taigun: Subpar Interiors, Baleno: CVT Whine).

That being said, I had visited our local NEXA showroom (Kalyani Motors, JP Nagar) to check out the Grand Vitara. I was acutely interested in the interior fit/finish of the car, in order to see how my Taigun could possibly be improved. My observations below are based on just the display vehicle (Mild Hybrid Alpha variant MT). I did not take a test drive, as I wasnt interested in acquiring the car as such.

1. Exterior: The car looks imposing from the outside. it looks longer than its actual 4.34 meter length and wider too. This car will have a respectable footprint on the road. It does have an MPV silhouette (due to its length and comparatively shorter height) though.
2. The driver seat: My first impression was a bit claustrophobic, my Taigun is more airy and the driver doesnt feel as cooped up. I did appreciate the spacious footwell, where the 3 pedals and the dead pedal were very well spaced out. Coming higher up, I realized under thigh support is very inadequate. I could fit my entire palm between the seat edge and the underside of my knee (I am 5ft 9 Inch). The side bolstering on the seat bottom was too much and they were squeezing my legs together. My left leg was seriously limited by the center console. The window switches on the driver side were oddly angled towards the driver, which I found to be a rather ergonomic. I do struggle at times with the window switches in my Taigun while I am driving. But the downside was, the right side door arm rest too was angled and made resting your right elbow a bit odd. The seat back felt fine, I dint have any complaints on it.
3. The dashboard: The car on display had a pretty nice combination of deep brown and black dashboard setup. The deep brown was soft touch and was made of a nice finished leatherette material. The black plastic on top was another story. It had a rough grain which looked cheaper than the dashboard plastic on wife's Baleno. The steering wheel too had similar issues, a lovely leatherette finished wheel to hold on to held back by a horn pad which looked like a direct pick from the swift (No offense to dzire owners, but the Grand Vitara costs thrice as much as the swift and deserves a better part bin). I must still mention the soft touch leatherette portions, as they were real nice and encompassed the entire cabin (Front and Back).
4. The rear seat: The width of the cabin seemed similar to my Taigun, so seating 3 in the back would still be a squeeze. This is excarberated by the comparatively low ceiling, which makes the reat seat feel cramped (In comparison to my Taigun). The panaromic sunroof is a life saver here by getting in more light from above. But I do have my reservations about the material used to cover it. With the cover on, it was letting the showroom lights into the cabin. I do not know how effective it would be on sunny days on the outside. And I believe some one else has mentioned this, but there is a sag to the sunroof cover as well. The seat finishing was on par (Better than the Taigun GT+), less bolstering, so 3 can be more comfortable in the rear seat. Very short seat rear pockets though, you cannot store long/high items in it.
5. Switchgear: The switches on the dashboard, lights, door pad are all sub par. I would equate them with the switchgear on my Taigun (Which is also sub par). This seems to be an issue due to the part bin being shared across the maruti range . I detested the interior lights as well (Warm White) vs the white interior lights on my Taigun.

The Maruti Grand Vitara is a very attractive package on paper (High fuel economy, all possible features, respectable performance etc). But frankly I was not impressed by it in person. The design is not seamless (subjective) and the execution has inconsistencies (Lovely steering wheel vs budget grade horn pad). All its features and design elements seem to be shoe horned together to ensure Maruti Suzuki can check as many boxes on the brochure as possible. But all the checkboxes dont flow together in real life.

Our biggest disappointment was that the car is not as spacious as it appears to be on the outside. My Taigun looks much smaller from the outside, but feels much larger on the inside.

I had gone to Nexa with my father in law who is a die hard Maruti Suzuki customer (He owns a Baleno). He felt let down as well . All this for an asking price of 24.7 lakhs OTR Bangalore. 1.5 lakhs more than the Taigun GT+.

Hope my perspective helps somebody else on our forum.

Cheers.

Read BHPian comments for more insights and information.