Maruti Celerio Diesel discontinued due to poor sales

The Maruti Celerio is one of the top 10 selling cars in India and the hatchback is offered with 3 fuel options – petrol, CNG and diesel. While most of the demand comes from petrol variants, the CNG variants have also been selling large numbers. Maruti introduced a two-cylinder diesel engine on the car but it failed to generate high sales.

Owing to this, Maruti has now discontinued the diesel variants of the Celerio. It is also said that dealers offered huge discounts to the tune of Rs one lakh on the Celerio diesel in November-December 2016 to clear all the stock they had. The Celerio is now available only with the 1.0-litre, three-cylinder petrol engine that is offered with a five-speed manual transmission or an AMT gearbox.

There are a number of reasons for the low demand of the diesel variants. First up, customers felt a bit averse to buying a car with a two-cylinder engine and even though the Celerio diesel was touted to be the most fuel efficient diesel car in India, the petrol variants also have good fuel efficiency and thus customers didn’t feel the need to pay an extra premium for the diesel variants.