Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest car maker, has started taking orders for the 2017 variant of S-Cross, its ‘crossover’ SUV.
Booking can be done for an initial payment of Rs 11,000 at any of its 280 NEXA showrooms, or by logging on to nexaexperience.com.
The car has not started selling and stocks won’t be available immediately.
S-Cross, in its initial avatar, has not been as successful as Brezza, Maruti’s mini SUV launched in 2016 that has been outselling the S-Cross.
While Brezza has sold over 1.5 lakh units in a little over a year, S-Cross — launched two years ago — has only sold about 60,000 units.
Despite getting a price cut last year, the S-Cross continues to be more expensive compared to Brezza by about Rs 1 lakh.
In addition to being easier on the wallet, Brezza was also considered more appealing, from a looks angle.
That, however, may be remedied in the new version.
“The all-new S-Cross sports an entirely new, bold design with a powerful upright stance. The masculine and aggressive upright stance is accentuated by a sculpted hood design and sleek headlamps,” Maruti Suzuki said.
“The sharp LED projector headlamps, housed neatly with the daylight running lamps (DRLs), make the all-new S-Cross more assertive. The imposing chrome on the grille, along with the emphatic S insignia, makes the all-new S-Cross distinct and premium.”
The model also comes with rear combination lamps (RCL) with LEDs, which it claimed are cleaner, sharper and more contemporary.
Tyres have been made wider at 215/60 R16 with two-tone alloys.
The 2017 S-Cross also gets the DDiS 200 engine with Smart Hybrid technology, meant to improve fuel efficiency.
“This is the third model in the Maruti Suzuki portfolio to host the DDiS 200 with Smart Hybrid technology. It comes packed with a host of features like idle-stop-start, torque assist, brake energy regeneration system and a gearshift indicator,” it said.
The interiors have also been modified with a satin chrome accent finish, a soft touch dashboard and newer seat fabric designs.
It also features a touchscreen infotainment system with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, a piano-black-coloured central panel and a leather-finish arm-rest.
It will be available in four variants – Sigma, Delta, Zeta and Alpha – and five colours — blue, white, silver and grey.
It said the model is already compliant with upcoming safety norms on frontal offset crash, side impact and pedestrian safety. It comes with rear seat ISO-FIX child seat safety mount.
“These features are standard across all variants of S-Cross,” the carmaker said.
Launched in August 2015, S-Cross was the first premium offering to debut from the company’s high-end retail channel-NEXA.
The Company has sold over 53,000 S-Cross in the domestic market and exported over 4,600 units.