Value for money. Review on Maruti Suzuki Baleno

I decided to purchase a car in March 2007. Previously drove a Honda Civic in US. When I went to purchase the car did not know to drive a manual one.First went to TATA Motors, it was saturday and they were almost closing at 2PM. Just next to it was the maruti show room. It was spectra motors, Borivali, Mumbai. The agent show me cars like swift, zen, esteem. Though I had mind set to purchase a car within 4-5 lakh range, somewhere in my mind I was looking for car similiar to CIVIC(atleast in terms of size).

I was not impressed after seeing all those cars. Then he shown me Baleno. It was big enough, looking OK. I decided to purchase this as dealer was giving me 70K discount. Still it cost me 7.8 Lakh.The dealer never mentioned that Maruti is phasing out Baleno. I asked them couple of times but dealer replied SX4 will come after almost a year. So paid the advance amount and then I did R&D.

There I noticed Maruti is Phasing out it. Oh Man, This dealer really a tout and it was my fault I did not do any ground work and just believed the tout.Anyway after purchasing the car, till now I drove almost 7K Km. Do not have any compalin regarding the car. Onlything I replaced is the clutch, this is probably I had never driven a Manual one before.Overall Car is good, spacious enough, pick up is very good. Do not know why People did not like this car.

Probably in india, people want to purchase brand name like HOnda in almost same price range and in Honda you will get a good milege.Closing the note with rating of 4 out of 5.UPDATE:It's now almost 8 months. The long drive I drove was from Mumbai to Bangalore alone with almost 60kg of luggage. The max speed I touched was in Mumbai-Pune highway and that was 185 KPH. It was raining when I reached Karnatak Border and night. I drove almost 450KM in rainy night but still managed to cover 1100 KM distance within 16 Hours and that also driving alone.Now I feel car is really good. The pick up is awesome. Milege though I got only 12.5KPLt. May be it's due to high speed driving...

But after the journey i'm getting one noise. During rainy night my car got couple of bad ditches and due to low ground clearance something is hurt. Need to check that. But any body has any idea what could be the noise. It's coming from the rear bottom of car.Update on 7th Jan 2009I had driven from Bangalore to Jajpur Road (Orissa) 1620 KM in 25 hours and Drove around 1500KM in Orissa and then return back again 1620KM(26 Hours).IN 2 long drives I did not take rest (No power nap even). Only couple of food/Cig breaks. Car Handling was quite good. Hit couple of really nasty ditches during nigyht at 100KPH. STill no issue.I've driven at 165KPH max on NH5, could not do it more as there was not much straight raod.Reliability on this car increased after this journey. I'll say Maruti should not have Discontinued such a power pack car.