The Victoris comes with three engine variants, all having a displacement of 1.5 litres. The basic naturally aspirated engine is available from the LXI onwards, the CNG is optional and costs around Rs 1 lakh more, while the strong hybrid is available from the VXI onwards and costs around Rs 18 to 20 lakh on-road.

Let's talk about the simplest and most affordable first features from the LXi range onwards. It is a 1.5-litre with no turbocharger, making a little over 100 horsepower, and it comes with a mild hybrid system that mostly just makes the stop-start feel smoother at traffic lights.

In the city it is easy to live with. The steering is light, the throttle response is gentle and predictable, and there is no turbo lag to work around, so you can drive it slowly through traffic without the car ever feeling awkward.

The automatic version deserves a special mention here because it is a conventional automatic rather than one of the cheaper automated manuals still being sold at this price, and it crawls forward in a jam smoothly instead of nodding everyone's head back and forth.

Where you have to adjust your expectations is on the open road with the car loaded. There is enough performance to hold 100 to 120 all day and enough to get past a truck, but you need to see the gap coming and commit to it early, particularly with five people and luggage on board or on any kind of incline.

The engine starts making itself heard past 2,000 rpm, gets noticeably loud after 3,500 and quite unpleasant beyond 4,500, and the frustrating part is that all that noise does not translate into much extra pace.

Most owners figure this out in the first fortnight and settle into driving it in a relaxed, unhurried way, which happens to be exactly how it delivers the fuel economy people buy it for.

If you want a car that surges forward the moment you touch the pedal, the turbo-petrol Creta and Seltos exist and they will feel like a completely different class of vehicle.

The CNG is the version half the market is choosing, and driving it is straightforward. It fires up on petrol every time and switches over to gas once the engine has warmed, and on gas it gives up roughly 15 percent of its power making about 85 hp.

On your own in city traffic, you will not notice this at all. With the family and the luggage on a flyover, you will, because you find yourself holding third gear longer and dropping down a gear earlier than the petrol would need.

The strong hybrid is the version worth driving even if you have no intention of buying it, because it shows what this platform can do. It pulls away from a standstill on the electric motor alone, keeps the petrol engine switched off for long stretches in slow traffic, and in a bumper-to-bumper crawl it is quieter than cars costing twice as much.

The catch is what happens when you ask for everything at once. The engine revs up to a single sustained note and stays there while the speed slowly catches up, which is simply how this kind of gearbox works, and it is the one thing that makes some people walk away from hybrids entirely.

Ride Quality

Ride quality is the thing that will keep you happy long after the novelty of the features has worn off. The suspension is set up soft without feeling wallowy, and just as importantly, it goes about its work quietly.

Broken tarmac and small potholes come through as movement rather than as noise thudding up through the floor. Really, bad craters still get through, and nothing here disguises a proper pothole, but the Victoris deals with the average road better than most of the rivals like Taigun, and Seltos which are tuned a bit more stiffly to better complement their sport nature.

On the highway it feels planted, with a gentle vertical float over undulations that nobody in the car will ever complain about, and the brakes stay composed even when you use them hard.

Hardly you will find a car with praiseworthy steering feedback under 50 lakhs. The Victoris is no exception, The steering tells you very little about what the front wheels are doing, the body leans early in corners, and the whole car is quite clearly tuned for people who value comfort and fussless driving over anything else.

If you are someone who is finding the meaning of usual sports car jargon like handling, cornering, acceleration, etc., stay away from the Victoris and better take a look at something from the Skoda, Volkswagen, Creta, or Hyundai catalog.

There is also all-wheel drive, which no direct rival offers, though it is restricted to the top two petrol automatics.

If you deal with monsoon slush regularly or spend weekends on unpaved surfaces, it is worth the money and there is nothing else in the segment to compare it against. It will not turn the car into an off-roader and the tyres will give up long before the electronics do.

Official ARAI numbers for the Victoris are 21 kmpl for the petrol, 28.65 kmpl for the strong hybrid, and 27 km/kg for the CNG. Maruti is, in my opinion, the only brand which gets closest to these numbers in real-world scenarios too.

After talking to a couple of Victoris owners, the general consensus is that the petrol version delivers around 13 to 15 kmpl in the city and 18 to 20 kmpl on the highway, depending on traffic, driving style, and whether you choose the manual or automatic.

CNG owners seem to be the happiest bunch, with most reporting around 18 to 20 km/kg in the city and 24 to 26 km/kg on the highway. When the car switches to petrol, expect fuel economy to drop to around 14 to 16 kmpl.

The strong hybrid is the most dependent on how and where you drive. Owners who spend most of their time in city traffic usually see around 22 to 25 kmpl, while those who primarily drive on highways often report 18 to 20 kmpl. If your daily routine is dominated by urban traffic, the hybrid makes a lot of sense. But if your driving mostly involves long highway trips, the regular CNG version offers similar real-world efficiency for a much lower purchase price.

The maths for CNG is what makes it the sensible pick for high-running buyers. CNG works out to roughly half the cost per kilometre of petrol once you account for the mileage difference, and the CNG variant costs about a lakh more than the equivalent petrol manual. 

On mostly city running you recover somewhere around the 35,000 to 45,000 km mark, which at 1,500 km a month means you are ahead within about two and a half years, and everything after that is money in your pocket. 

As far as the strong hybrid is concerned, I personally find it just a technological exercise from Maruti showcasing the flexibility of their platform. The EV-only range is around 800 metres to 1 km, and it cannot be externally charged. 

The strong hybrid shines in city traffic with fuel economy in the mid-20s, but it does not make much sense as a value proposition. Only get it if you want the Victoris with the highest feature list in the shortest timeframe, as the hybrid, being the top model, could likely already be sitting in showroom.

The nicest surprise inside is that the dual-tone white and black cabin theme starts right from the base LXi rather than being held back for the expensive trims. Sit in a base Victoris and it genuinely does not feel like a base car, which is more than you can say for the entry-level version of almost anything else in this segment.

The lighter colour brightens the whole cabin, makes it feel wider than it actually is, and it is something you notice pleasantly every single time you open the door.

The obvious objection is that white will get dirty, and it will. In practice, though, most owners in this country are going to have seat covers fitted after taking delivery.

The rest of the cabin gives you a more mixed report. The layout is modern and easy to use, the screens on the higher trims look current rather than an afterthought, and the round steering wheel is a nicer thing to hold than the flat-bottomed unit Maruti fits almost everywhere else.

The front seats are comfortable across a long drive and the ventilation function actually cools rather than just moving warm air around.

Then you touch the lower door plastics, or use the power window switches that have been carried over from cars a decade older, and you can see exactly where the money was saved.

A Creta feels considerably richer inside, and that gap is real and is not going away.

The rear bench comfortably seats two adults and squeezes in a third with complaints. The floor hump, the cabin width and the high seat base are the limitations, and headroom gets tight for anyone approaching six feet because the panoramic sunroof housing eats into the roofline.

This is the one part of the car you should physically test with your own family rather than take anyone's word for.

The boot is where the Victoris earns forgiveness for a lot of that. There is roughly 439 litres of it with a flat floor and a wide opening, enough for four people to pack for a week without folding a single seat down, and the CNG version keeps every litre of it.

The strong hybrid is the exception, because its battery pack sits under the boot floor and takes a serious bite out of the space, and it does without a spare wheel too, offering a puncture repair kit instead.

Infotainment

The Victoris gets a well-laid-out cabin with features spread sensibly across the range. Even the lower variants come with a touchscreen, steering-mounted controls, six airbags, and all the essentials for daily use.

The VXI feels like the sweet spot, adding wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, automatic climate control, rear AC vents, and connected car features. Move to the ZXI and ZXI+, and you get a much richer experience with a panoramic sunroof, ventilated front seats, a 360-degree camera, head-up display, powered driver's seat, premium sound system, wireless charger, and Level 2 ADAS.

The infotainment system is quick to respond, easy to navigate, and supports wireless smartphone connectivity without much fuss. While the cabin does use hard plastics in places, the fit and finish are solid, storage spaces are practical, and overall comfort is among the best in the segment, especially for families.

The front end is clean and modern, with slim lamps set low in the bumper and the connected daytime running light running across the nose, and it manages to look expensive without trying too hard to be aggressive.

The sides are just plain and look quite slim, low, and elongated, giving it a substantial road presence.

There is a small rear quarter window on either side, which makes things a bit more airy for taller passengers and also gives you decent enough visibility when you are reversing the car out of a parking space.

The rear has a sort of ducktail like shape which looks very unique and something that makes Victoris recognizable from very far away.

The upper section of the tailgate has been sculpted, which visually stretches the car and makes it appear longer than Victoris actually is.

There happen to be a Grand Vitara and a Victoris parked within about thirty metres of each other on my street. The Grand Vitara looks rugged, boxy and hunkered down, exactly the shape people picture when they hear the word SUV.

The Victoris, supposedly the lesser car because it sells through Arena rather than Nexa, looks longer, softer and noticeably posher, sitting somewhere between a sedan and a crossover rather than being a full-blooded SUV.

Which of the two you prefer comes down entirely to taste, but the assumption that the Nexa car must be the more upmarket-looking one does not survive thirty seconds of looking at them side by side.

The weak point is the wheels, which are 17 inches across the entire range and look a size too small inside the arches.

Also, the plastic cladding over the arches is not painted. It is simply plastic that will ruin the whole look of the car after the first couple of weeks out of the showroom.

This is the strongest single argument for the car and it is not a close contest. Bharat NCAP gave it 5 stars with 31.66 out of 32 for adult protection and 43 out of 49 for children, and Global NCAP, testing under its stricter new protocol, also gave it five stars with 33.72 out of 34 for adults, which was the highest adult score any car tested in India had achieved at that point.

More important than the headline number is what comes as standard. Six airbags, stability control, hill hold assist, ISOFIX child seat anchors and three-point seatbelts for all five occupants are fitted from the base LXi upwards, which means the cheapest Victoris on the road protects the people inside it just as well as the most expensive one.

The Level 2 driver assistance package is comprehensive on paper, covering adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, autonomous emergency braking, blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert and high beam assist.

An notable issue is availability, because it is restricted to the top two petrol automatics, which means every manual buyer, every CNG buyer and the entire strong hybrid range go without it. Given the hybrid is the most expensive version Maruti sells, that is a difficult decision to defend.

The Hyundai Creta is the car to measure this against, and it wins on the things you feel rather than the things you calculate. Better cabin materials, a turbo petrol and a diesel for anybody who wants actual pace, and a more polished showroom and ownership experience.

What it does not have is a factory CNG option of any kind, so if gas is your reason for shopping, the comparison ends before it begins.

The Kia Seltos is the driver's pick of the mainstream three and the one to buy if you actually enjoy a good road, and it also offers a diesel. It shares the Creta's blind spot on CNG.

The Grand Vitara and the Toyota Urban Cruiser Hyryder are this same car wearing different badges, and the Grand Vitara's CNG still puts the cylinder in the boot, which means the Victoris beats its own sibling on the one point that matters most to gas buyers.

Choose between them on the deal you get and the dealer you trust rather than on the engineering, because there is no meaningful difference there.

The Skoda Kushaq and the Volkswagen Taigun are far more enjoyable to drive and harder to service outside the bigger cities, and neither will come close on running costs. Tata's Curvv and Sierra bring more design ambition and a diesel option.

The Honda Elevate is solidly built and light on equipment for what it asks. The Renault Duster and the Nissan Tekton are competing hard on space and pricing.

None of them offers what this car does in combination, which is a CNG that does not cost you your luggage space, a hybrid this efficient, all-wheel drive availability and crash scores this high, with Maruti's service reach behind all of it. What you give up in return is outright performance, any diesel option, cabin richness and rear seat space.

Buy the CNG. That is the honest one-line summary of this car, and roughly half the market has already arrived at the same answer without any help. A mid-spec Victoris CNG gives you the lowest running cost in the segment, the best crash protection currently on sale here, a boot that stays completely usable, and a service network that reaches everywhere, and it does all of that for less than a mid-spec Creta costs.

The petrol makes perfect sense if gas is impractical where you live or your monthly running is modest. The strong hybrid is mainly for early adopters and those who are willing to spend about 20 lakhs or so for something unique in terms of driving experience with surprisingly good city only mileage.

The compromises are real and you should go in knowing them. The engine will never excite you, the cabin looks better than it feels to the touch, and three adults in the back for a four-hour drive will not be a happy arrangement.

For the family this car was designed for, though, those are precisely the right things to have traded away, and it is difficult to argue with a hundred thousand buyers.

Decide on the fuel before anything else, because it matters far more than the trim level and it determines which features you can even have.

If you drive under 1,000 km a month and there is no convenient CNG pump near you, take the petrol manual in a mid trim, or the automatic if your daily commute is stop-start traffic every single day.

If you drive 1,500 km or more and have a CNG station you can reach without a detour, take the CNG in VXi or ZXi, because the LXi misses too much of the equipment you use daily even though its cabin looks good.

If you go hybrid, make peace with the smaller boot and the missing spare wheel first. If you live around hills, ghats or unpaved roads, the AllGrip automatic is expensive and it is the only all-wheel drive car in this class.

On trims generally, the middle of the range is the value sweet spot, because the entire safety package is standard from the base car upwards and the mid variants add the screen and comfort features people actually use every day.

Go to the top of the range only if you specifically want the driver assistance suite, the 360-degree camera and the head-up display, and remember that doing so locks you into the petrol automatic.