Copyright © 2011 Jaideep Ranade

There are times when, while driving, I get nauseated. It’s not motion sickness, mind you. I just happen to see something that activates the gag reflex; sights like the Mahindra Xylo, the Maruti Suzuki A-Star, advertisement hoardings with Kareena Kapoor on it, and so on. Such sights are best viewed with your eyes closed, and since I can’t do that while driving, I must look away to avoid painting the interiors of my car with that morning’s breakfast. But nothing- NOTHING- compares to the disgust and the utterly uncontrollable urge to throw up generated by Maruti-Suzuki’s newest baby, the Ritz, originally named Splash.

What in the name of all that is good was the designer thinking? In all likelihood, he wasn’t. I suspect the person designing this car- his masterpiece, no doubt- had just eaten something with pepper that hadn’t quite gone down his throat. People sneeze in different ways. Some go ‘achoo’, blasting away everything in its path. Some prefer to hold it in, and go ‘achoogmph’ to avoid certain disaster. Some even perform various kinds of ‘xmptrlb’, which includes pretty much everything. But I suspect the designer of this car sneezed differently. Here he is, carefully sketching out the car, and he is doing the car’s boot, and there, he sneezes. His hand moves uncontrollably, finishing the curved rear-end just as snot splashes on the paper. When he is done cleaning that mess, it reveals the mess underneath. He cannot be bothered to change the new design, and goes with it to his boss.

“What shall we name the car?” the boss asks.

Uh-oh, there’s a sneeze coming. “Ritz,” sneezes the designer.

“What?”

“Ritz,” another sneeze.

“Ah. Ritz. I quite like it.”

And that sticks.

Ritz!

Just look at it. The indicators look like pimples; the taillights surrounding them like too much makeup in an ill-conceived attempt to hide them; the fat rear-bumper makes you want to go on a diet, and the rear doors are big enough only for a Chihuahua puppy. Then the front of the car looks like a daschund’s nose that was banged into a wall one time too many,  raising the height of the car to compete with Kilimanjaro. It had to be a sneeze.

Either that… or the designer took inspiration from Renault. And that is certain disaster.

Perhaps Renault should stick to making racing cars.

Let me make one thing clear. I like all cars, or at least, I used to, before the Ritz came along. There’s no doubt it looks bad from the outside, but just look at it from the inside.

Just look at it. The gearstick looks like an overgrown mealworm and the tachometer looks like it was added as an afterthought. The windshield is designed to show the sky instead of the road and the plastic parapet over the speedometer seems to have been added for visibility issues during daytime. The control-panel is graceless and the steering looks broken, there isn’t enough space in the back and the boot is minuscule. The whole thing is, well, sad.

So far then, the car was trash, so when I drove it I was hoping to see some redeeming features. There were none. The mealworm gear was as slow as one, the power-assisted steering lacked power, the tachometer needle was as thin as the second-hand of my wristwatch, the car dragged like it had a cow sitting on the roof and was equally tall, the rear seats were small and didn’t have much foot-space, the driver seat was uncomfortable, and the paddles artless… The gear was too loud, the shift was too slow and too hard, and when you stepped on the accelerator, it was almost as if someone sitting under the hood was throttling the fuel intake for a while before letting up… The engine was too loud, not powerful enough to handle the one tonne car, and there was no smoothness to it. The acceleration with the air conditioning working was like that of a tired old cow pulling a train up a muddy hill on a stormy night… The air conditioning doesn’t reach the rear seats… The suspension was too hard, the ride too bumpy, almost like sitting on the back of that tired old cow… The dashboard was large enough to sleep on but for the mushroom like tachometer growing out of it, and the boot was not spacious enough for anything but the Chihuahua… and I am not going to cover the bad service by the Maruti-dealers.

I could just go on and on; instead, I will summarize:

From the outside, it looks like a minivan cut in half and banged into a wall, but from the inside, it is even worse.

There are two things about this car that I cannot understand. Firstly, I cannot believe Suzuki could come up with a car whose rear-end looks like it was formed when a forklift carrying a section of a large sewage pipe crashed into it sideways, cutting away the rest of the car. I cannot believe that they would support the design and production of meconium instead of firing the head-designer for even proposing it.

What is more appalling than Suzuki selling excrement, however, is that people buy it. The head man of Suzuki must have said to his sales team, “Let’s find some suckers to buy this… um…ahem… car.” And they found them!

If there was a God who protects us from harm, saves us from sin, this car couldn’t have existed. So whenever I see the Sneeze Car on the roads, I look away, having found proof that God doesn’t exist.

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Specifications:

Model: Ritz

Company: Maruti-Suzuki

Version: Zxi

On Road Price (Pune): INR 544,553.00

Kerb Weight: 1030

Engine:

Displacement: 1197

Cylinders: 4

Valves: 16

Type: K12M

Power (HP): 85

Torque (Nm): 113

HP/Tonne: 82.52

Mileage (As informed by the salesperson):

City: 8 mpl

Highway: 10.5 mpl

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My Ratings (1-10):

[1-3: Poor; 4-5: Acceptable; 6-7: Good; 7+: Amazing]

- Speed:

Acceleration: 3

Deceleration: 3

- Comfort:

Driver: 1

Passengers: 1

- Design:

Interior: 1

Exterior: -10

Cabin Space: 1

COOLNESS: -10

OVERALL RATING: -1.25

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