R.I.P. Maruti Celerio Diesel

Thank you to MyCarHelpline for the heads up!

Maruti Suzuki has discontinued sales of the Celerio diesel in India. While the automaker hasn't made an official announcement about the step, the updated price list of the Celerio on the official website only shows prices of the petrol variants.

The Celerio was initially launched in 2014 with petrol and CNG variants. The car got a satisfactory response, mainly driven by the AMT (automated manual transmission) variants. To further take advantage of the Celerio brand name, Maruti added a diesel engine option in 2015.

The Celerio Diesel was powered by a 793 cc, two-cylinder engine that put out 47 BHP and 125 Nm of torque while being mated to a 5-speed manual gearbox. Being a two-cylinder unit, NVH levels of this DDiS 125 engine weren't acceptable, especially while idling. Moreover, the small capacity engine lacked in the power department as compared to other cars available in the price band, something that was pointed in our official review as well. All these issues cumulatively resulted in a lukewarm response for the Celerio Diesel.

Maruti did try to revive the car's sales by offering some discounts, but could not surpass the limitations of the 793 cc two-cylinder engine block. Maruti dealers eventually offered discounts of up to Rs. 1 lakh on the Celerio Diesel during the last couple of months of 2016 to clear existing stocks.