I bought the Baleno in March 2019. This model is the older Baleno after Maruti announced a minor cosmetic facelift of the car in March 2019, but since I was getting a great deal with the Alpha version, I decided to go ahead with it.
Had bought this as a secondary car as my primary car is my beloved 12+ yrs old Maruti SX4. I hadn’t used the Baleno much in 2019 but only a few long drives at Nasik and Pune. On my very first long drive trip from Mumbai to Nashik, I managed to get 27 kmpl which was a real surprise and shocker to me. Yes, the obvious factors were very less traffic on road and I maintained the speedometer only around 60-70 km/hr. I had hardly used around 3000 km in 2019.
Fast-forward to 2020 and the car was not virtually used because of COVID-19 reasons. But in Dec 2020 I had to do multiple Mumbai Pune trips(around 5-6) in Dec itself, virtually every weekend. I consistently obtained 20-21 kmpl on every trip with heavy and bumper to bumper traffic from Navi Mumbai to my home.
In the last week of Dec 2020, I again had to do 2 trips to Nashik where I obtained around 24 kmpl with a speed of 90-100 km/hr most of the time. With petrol prices going beyond Rs.90 per liter, it was time to save some money and I was pretty happy with the mileage. The odometer is now touching around 5000 km.
Now coming to the interiors. Since I own the older version, the interior is fully black which I fine with. The plastic is of good quality, if not the best. The infotainment system is also good, but have heard that it is better in the facelifted Baleno. But I am happy with the infotainment system. The speakers are also good with enough bass, hence I don’t find any reason to replace the stock speakers unless you are very serious about music.
The Interior cabin is pretty silent with most of the outside noise getting blocked. AC is very powerful. I usually don’t need to go higher than 25 C but many times even this temp gets very chilling and I have to lower the cooling to 26 or 27 C also many times.
Boot space is huge when you compare it to a hatchback with 336 liters! My SX4 has 500 liters, which is close to the full-fledged sedan.
Legroom is very good, in fact, better than my SX4.
coming to the Cons now:-
1.There is a good amount of engine noise in the second gear which goes when you shift to higher gears, but yes there is a good amount of noise in the second gear.
2.Car feels light, hence I am not sure about the safety of the passengers. Maybe I am used to the sturdiness of my SX4.
3.The daylight color headlamps(available in Alpha version) are not so good for night driving. I feel traditional yellow lights are better here. I am planning to change them soon to a better quality headlight.