Back at home in the mallu land, the old 1994 neptune blue 800cc workhorse was in its last leg having done more than 200000 clicks on the odometer, and before I could think on December 29, 2006. I plonked my bottom on my very own Suzuki Baleno Vxi.
So lets get to the heart of the matter
The Engine
The Suzuki Baleno is powered by a 1599cc SOHC 16 valve engine that features the Suzuki’s Smart-i torque delivery system. Don’t ask me what that is as nobody knows that in Maruti or the internet. May be it is one of those top secret technologies to squeeze more miles out of your petrol. Come on, what else can it be in the "kitna deti hai?" world. The ones that came before 2006 came with 94 BHP and after 2006, the tree huggers wanted more strict emission norms, so thanks to BS3, 3 horses of the 94 horses went missing leaving us with 91 which is still good enough to pin you down to your seat. If you are thinking, wait only 91 bhp? well forget what you see on paper because you are in with a rev happy engine that goes all red only at a meaty 6700 rpm. And if you are one of those who has a heavy foot, this engine is quite forgiving as it loves to play around its revs all the way up to the limit. I still use the car and I have nothing that has ever gone wrong with the engine.
Styling
Before you could bring up the image of a Baleno on the screen inside your head, let me tell you, it is not the prettiest car on earth. The exterior styling is as exciting as a vegetable salad. What I think of it is that the team who designed the front end was in the north pole, the team that designed the rear end was in Mars, the never met and it shows. The rear end of the car has to be the worst that we could possibly feast our eyes on. But if you look at it closely, it follows the design lines of the BMW’s and Maseratis of its age somewhere where and there. The same trend goes inside too. The dashboard is just boring and uninspiring for the Lxi variants as everything is so black inside, makes you question yourself whether you’ve gone blind. Thankfully on the Vxi, it comes with a fake aluminium finish on the center console which livens up the otherwise boring looks out there. May be it is fair to say that the styling was a total train wreck on what otherwise is a great car to live with.
Performance
To me this is where the Baleno will throw all its party tricks at you. After all these years of ownership, I have to say that there is not a single car that gives you the comfort, handling and performance of a Baleno in its class till date. The only cars that could were the Honda City VTEC(the very first ones and not the one that looked like a Prius), Ford Fiesta 1.6s, and the Fiat Palio 1.6. The Baleno if you had the right tyres on it would give you the confidence to push it hard and it rewards you quite well. What I don’t like about it is the gear ratios. The first gear is so short you have to shift the moment you move but the next two gears is where everything that the engine can give is hiding. After that the fourth and the fifth pretty much are just there and so long you would fall asleep. I hate the gearbox that comes with it. Sometimes I just think what if it had only the first three gears on it?
Handling
You are in for a treat with this one. This car rides low and this is a boon if you are on the highway all the time. But in a speed breaker city like Bangalore, you will have some heart stopping moments where the Balenos belly scrapes literally everywhere with four or five people or a reasonable amount of luggage. But otherwise if you are passionate about driving on a budget, this is the car for you. It loves to be thrown into corners and it holds its ground well, provided you upgrade to 15 inch rims and tyres. The 14 inch stock wheels would do just fine but why would you do that when you have the 15 inchers anyway? The handling of the car comes alive specially on hilly roads and the steering response is just spot on as it is a three turns to full lock setup. Brilliant.
Creature comforts and accessories
With the Lxi, you just get a bigger Esteem to be fair. However, with the Vxi, it gets a climatronic air con, height adjustable driver seat, tilt adjustable steering column and most important, those plush bucket seats that hold you in safe and comfy. If you are a person of average Indian height, I am guessing around 5ft 8 inches to 6ft, you would be more than comfortable in the seats rear or front as it gives you great under thigh support, and enough legroom and headroom which you can probably get from cars in the next segment. It truly was a car way ahead of its time in a very young and conservative Indian car market. The air conditioning system, the climatronic one that is needs high praise here as it according to Autocar that came out those days and I remember reading it with my own eyes said that it was way better than the one you would probably find on a Mercedes Benz S-Class back in the day. By today’s standards this may sound like nothing but back in its day, having an extra mirror on the left hand side of a car was considered an accessory and probably a luxury. But here is what it was, it had very little things to go wrong because nothing was complicated or whatsoever. If you can live with a boring looking dashboard everyday on a great car. Why not?
Fuel Efficiency
Not something you would be very pleased with, but it is not something that will break your bank either. On a hot sunny day with the air con on, in the city, it averages around 12 kilometres to a litre of the golden juice you feed it with but on the highway if you are steadily cruising around 80 to 100 kmph, it will be generous enough to give you 15 kmpl or more if you are lucky and you maintain it in ship shape.
So what the hell on earth went wrong with such a nice car?
Lets put the blame entirely on Maruti Suzuki India. The Baleno is the biggest example in the automotive industry in the country that demonstrates what horrible, lousy and unimaginative marketing can bring you. If you compare the cars it had to compete with namely the Ford Ikon, Mitsubishi Lancer and the Hyundai Accent, even a downright lazy Hindustan Motors marketed the Lancer a lot better than Maruti. And because of that, quite surprisingly there are more Lancers on the road even today than the Baleno.
One of the other things which MSIL goofed up in a spectacular fashion was that, they were least bothered to manufacture the parts in house or find suppliers to make them. Heck the car was a CBD unit and was just assembled here in India. And because of this the spares you could get were all made in Japan SGP(Suzuki Genuine Parts) and you could buy them only if the government gives you a subsidy or by going for a personal loan or selling one of your kidneys. The spares were bloody expensive and hard to get. Picture this, last year a stupid dog ran right in front of my car, I hit it and ran over it and the left side of my front bumper was in shambles. Thankfully my local mechanic friend fixed it for me but a new one with the painting is a good INR15, 000! and I have to wait at least 2 weeks for it to arrive from the moon. Let me give you another example to emphasize what I am on about. The air filter on the Baleno is made by Denso. It costs 1300 even today. You also get a MGP part that is 600 and a totally duplicate one for 300.
So what is it like to live with a good old Baleno?
To sum it up, it is one of those cars, no matter what you throw at it, it will keep on asking you "is that all you got little fella?" It was almost the perfect car. And I feel the new Toyota Etios has taken a lot of lessons from it in terms or space, size and ride comfort. The engine is quite possibly the best in the country in its class. Yes many would say it is a SOHC engine but if you are to sort of person who would love to modify the engine according to your specifications, the G16BB which is the engine that comes with it is your choice. It is absolutely bullet proof as long as your modifications are restricted to everything except a turbo. But like me who had to be a family man due to sudden change of situations and couldn’t do anything with my car than keep it bone stock, it can play that game too. It is such a lovely car to drive and it has the capability to much miles like a Pac-Man eating pac-dots. It is a car that is made for the long run. However, times have changed, fuel has got a lot more expensive and people have moved on to the more flashy cars of today. The resale value has hit rock bottom and you could get a decent, well taken care of Baleno for under INR200000, which is good if you are the second owner and heartbreaking if you were the foolish first. I have read somewhere good people die young. To a reasonable extent, the same holds true with good cars as well.