When I was planning to buy a car, I was actually looking for a Maruti 800. Basically, it is because it is the cheapest of cars and good mileage. But Alto did its magic and I fell for it.
The car not only has all the good features of a Maruti 800, but also the space is more comfortable and look is more attractive. The mileage is good (13-16 in the city and 18-20 on the Highway, depending on the usage of AC, ) thought, can not be compared with 800. The comfort of driving it particularly and travelling by it for a longer journey too, has been very good.
It had been nearly 1.5 years since I am driving my Alto LX. I believe it has kept its promise all the while. When I felt it was a good bet, I took it to some extra miles of testing and drove to the off-road trip to Mukkurthi, a mid-forest place near Ooty. It did too well on the jeep tracks without having a problem.
The steering control is one thing I enjoyed in this manual-steering car. I could negotiate a very ’nice’ curve with a speed of about 100, which was a first of kind of experience for me.
In an year and half I have done about 15000 Kms and I am happy about every kilometres of its drive.
The only few problems I had with the car (may be my particular car) is that the AC fan pushes stinking air when the AC is switched off, and the service people are still not able to fix it. The other problem is the very generic one - AC performance is too sensitive to compete with the power of the car. May be this is too much to ask from a 800 CC car with AC, but I think this is one factor I would consider the car could have been better.
With all these I would give Alto a fabular 4-4.5 out of 5, for my kind of expectation.
Service from the dealer/Maruti:
I bought the car from Pratham Motors Bangalore. The service from them has been nice but the amount of attention they give to the problem has been decreasing by the increasing no of months. Initially, they are more and more caring about your car, but later, unless you put your foot down and get the service done to your satisfaction, all that you can expect is their pretence of being good to the customer. This may appear the feedback about specific dealer, but all the post-sales initiative is majorly driven by Maruti.
I can give service a 2.5 points out of 5.