After an 18-month absence from the SUV passenger car segment, Maruti Udyog (MUL) today announced its comeback by launching the new Grand Vitara.

Priced at Rs 13.8 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) for the manual transmission model and Rs 14.8 lakh for the automatic transmission model, the car replaces the earlier Vitara that came with a heavier price tag of Rs 18.28 lakh (manual transmission).

The earlier Vitara was, however, more powerful with an engine capacity of 2600cc whereas the new car has an engine capacity of 1995 cc. The aggressive pricing pitches Vitara strongly against the likes of Ford Endeavour(Rs 14.72 lakh for the base model) and the Honda CR-V(Rs 17.8 lakh for the base model).

"Grand Vitara happens to be our fifth model in less than 12 months," Jagdish Khattar, MD & CEO, Maruti Udyog said after the launch today. The company has launched Wagon R Duo, Zen Estilo, Swift Diesel and SX4 over the last one year.

The car will be imported from Japan as a completely built unit (CBU), the company said.

On the issue of hardening interest rates, Khattar said: "They are still impacting sales of the company. Good results of one month (June) are not sufficient to say that the impact is not there."

Source: [url=http://www.domain-b.com/companies/companies_m/maruti/20070705_launches.htm]domain-B[/url]