1. The ride is more pliant than Swift Hatch, a direct result of Maruti’s retuning of the suspension, front and back. The suspension to its credit also works unobtrusively.

2. The backseats are more comfortable owing to better angled back rest and padding which is spot on.

3. The engine is a disappointment which is very surprising considering how well Maruti had shoe horned the 1.3 Diesel in the Swift Hatch . The performance and sprightly nature of the hatch has been blunted a great deal. Unlike swift hatch the turbo boost comes in very late, around 2200-2300 rpm (2000 rpm in case of Swift) and below that the car struggles to accelerate. We were three people in the car with the AC on and the engine struggled to pull if the engine revs fell below 1500 rpm, but once above 2000 rpm the car moves smartly, accelerating hard and the performance is satisfying. Swift Diesel and the Palio 1.3 with the same engine fare much better on the performance front. We need to test drive the car for a longer period to reach to any conclusions, so for the time being hold your horses!

4. The engine hasn’t lost any of the refinement. Its very silent and accelerating hard, it sounds almost like a petrol!

5. The chrome lined dials looks great and upmarket. The speedometer font glow in a muted white hue while the tripmeter glow in orange. The combination looks really good at night.

6. The interior quality is good but the factory fitted stereo sounds worse. You need to change the speakers right away.

7. The electronic climate control AC is superb and cool really well and really fast.

8. The drop in performance with the AC on is marginal.

9. The smallish steering is very sporty and steering mounted audio controls are a boon while driving.

10. The handling is about the same as the hatch minus some of the urgency to attack the corners. The steering is still a little slack around the straight-ahead position, kind of rubber band effect and you need to coerce the steering to point the car to a curve. The steering also lacks feel.

11. The rear looks really nice and bulbous in a positive way and can swallow huge amount of luggage too. The general feedback on the looks is thumbs up from most, pat on the back for all the Maruti engineers who worked hard integrating the boot with the Swift.

12. The panel gaps for the new boot lid aren’t perfect but only a keen eye would notice that. The overall boot design is inspired heavily by the BMW 7 series. It looks like a smallish “Camry ” or  “the rear looks like a BMW” exclaimed some.

13. The car was stared at by all and sundry and almost everyone recognized the car as Swift Dzire. Good marketing Maruti!

Overall a positive first impression except for the engine performance which left us a little disappointed. The car weighs a mere 30 kgs more than the hatch and we were expecting similar performance as the Swift hatch. We need to wait for a full test drive report to confirm, an even greater reason for test driving the car in full as soon as possible.