2019 Maruti Baleno

If a car is priced under Rs 10 lakh and wears a Maruti Suzuki badge it is destined to be successful. But the Baleno is very important to Maruti for very different reasons. It is their first foray into the premium hatchback segment which is dominated by Hyundai’s classy i20. The Baleno is also the second model to be sold out of the more premium Nexa group of dealerships. After Nexa took a big hit with the unenthusiastic response for the overpriced S-Cross, the pressure is on Baleno’s small car shoulders to justify Maruti’s premium marketing tactics.

I’m a little late in keeping my promise of bringing to you a detailed highway run report of the Baleno RS. And there is a good reason for that. Good for my colleagues, that is, who have been using it more often than me. It was used on car shoots, a studio shoot and even our video review. The Baleno RS has been the most-preferred long-termer our team has had this month. It has done the Mumbai-Pune Expressway innumerable times and here’s how it coped up.

Our long-termer Baleno RS has been in the hands of many of my colleagues this month. Not one of them wanted to return the car, for reasons which I will dwell upon later. But thankfully, I finally got to use the car within the city, and got a better feel of this latest offering from Maruti. And as promised, here we are, with the car's city driving report.