Highway Run

In our last report, we told you what this second-generation Brezza was like in the city and how it performed in peak bumper-to-bumper traffic. Well, this time we are back to give you the highs and lows of the Brezza as a kilometre-muncher.

As a car to drive on the highway, the Brezza is very compliant and will do your bidding albeit at a slightly slower pace. In this age of turbocharging and gasoline direct injection, the Brezza’s naturally aspirated nature feels pure yet behind the competition in terms of pace. This is most evident in the way the engine picks up speed especially mated to this six-speed torque converter automatic which, as its name suggests, converts torque and with just 136Nm could have certainly done with a bit more from the engine. Nonetheless, once you do get up to speed, it’s relatively easy to stay there, more so because this is an automatic, one task of you stalling the car is reduced from your checklist.

Cruise Controlling

Two round trips in the Brezza of the now heavily policed Mumbai-Pune expressway meant that I had the cruise control working overtime for me to travel smoothly in an attempt to comply with the varying speed limits across various sections of the roadway. It makes easy work of keeping your pace constant and with apps like Waze and Radarbot, it’s easy to keep track of the speed cameras en route. On a side note, Waze offers a host of voices and I got a great kick out of having Arnold ‘The Terminator’ Schwarzenegger’s voice telling me to chill out just before a speed camera. Integrating cruise control into the HUD is also a welcome step in terms of letting you focus on the road.

The paddle shifters are surprisingly responsive and offer instant engine braking but because there’s not a lot of torque you would be shifting a lot to stay in the meat of the torque band. On the highway, the insulation is quite good and it rides very nicely too with a kind of reassuring ability to gobble up big bumps and potholes. The traffic jams have become a nightmare of sorts on the expressway, especially in the ghat section and it is here that the Brezza shines once again in its ability to let you judge the edges easily if you have to filter your way through the crowd.

If I had to pick out something to be picky about, it would be the fact that despite the right tools, the Brezza feels slow and for a lot of the time you would have to build up speed to overtake large vehicles. In the city, I had been getting between 11-12kmpl while these two highway runs had boosted my mileage to 14kmpl. It has now settled at 12.6kmpl which is acceptable considering what the Brezza has to offer.

I can see clearly now

If I had to give it off to Maruti Suzuki for one thing, it would their decision to give their premium cars full LED headlamps in their respective top-spec versions. It lights up the road with the kind of potential that halogen-based units just can’t offer. As you can see from our images, the throw is lengthy, clear and positioned to aim at the road. It’s been particularly useful in cutting a path in the smog that’s descended over Mumbai in the last month or two.

Big Boot Business

Road trips mean big luggage and that’s something that the Brezza is quite adept at. With the second row up you get 328 litres but the seats fold down and the second-row seat base flips up for additional space and that liberates a lot of useable cargo space. As you can see, if your rear occupants don’t mind getting to know each other well, then they can squeeze up in the 60 section of the 60:40 split folding seats and use the other side for additional storage.

System update

As I was completing this report, Maruti Suzuki announced a major update for the infotainment system adding wireless connectivity for Apple Carplay/Android Auto. How this is to use is something that we will be able to tell you in the next report.

Product Details

Make: Maruti Suzuki

Model and variant: Brezza 1.5 ZXi Plus AT Dual Tone

Kilometres this month: 1200km

Fuel efficiency: 14kmpl

Price: Rs 13.96 lakh (ex-showroom)

Photography: Kaustubh Gandhi

Maruti Suzuki Brezza ZXi Plus 1.5 AT Long-Term Review: Introduction

Maruti Suzuki Brezza Automatic Long Term Review: City Report