It was Maruti that has brought the revolution in the car market in India with its Maruti 800 and this time as well it will be the one which will take the diesel car demand to the prime. Sensing high demand for Swift Diesel and Swift Dzire Diesel models as well as the diesel model of its cars in India, Maruti has decided to step up the diesel engine production capacity to 7 lakh engines per annum. This will also help Maruti experiment diesel engines in its small cars such as Maruti Alto and even in new Maruti 800 as well as the best selling tom boy car Wagon R.

If all goes well and incidents such as the Manesar one do not come in between, Maruti will be producing 7 lakh engines per year by 2014. Currently the car maker has an installed capacity of producing 3 lakh engine and it is getting supply of 1 lakh 1.3 L multijet engines from Fiat India. This takes the total diesel engine capacity of Maruti to 4 lakh units. An addition of 4 lakh engines production capacity per year in less than two years is what Maruti has proposed. It is believed that the car maker will be installing a new plant at Mehsana in Gujarat and will be shifting the production of the export oriented models such as Maruti A Star, Swift and Swift Dzire there.

The target seem highly achievable as presently as well, Maruti is facing huge demand for its diesel cars while there are no takers for some of the petro models and it had to export them to utilize the production. Recently, Maruti has also stopped production of some petrol models due to the rising stock of Maruti petrol model cars. Meanwhile experts believe that an attempt to increase the diesel engine production capacity means that the supply of diesel models of its cars will also improve and waiting period could be shortened. It is also believed that this way Maruti could also have room to launch more cars in diesel.