The Suzuki Ignis AMT has surprised us on all fronts, not least with its surprisingly smooth transmission
When Maruti-Suzuki launched the first car with an automated manual transmission (AMT) gearbox, it was the Celerio. On the test drive of the car in Jodhpur, the Celerio AMT felt a bit off, and I found myself shifting manually. The next time round I drove an AMT from Maruti it was the Alto K1. This was a marked improvement. The gear shifts were a lot smarter than before and talking to the engineer, a fellow Bengali, who had worked on mating the AMT to the Alto, one realised the amount of work that goes on even while mating a familiar gearbox to a car for the first time. Beyond just the power output of the engine as well as torque, the weight and even the handling of the car has to be considered. It was clear that Maruti’s engineers were getting their heads around AMT gearboxes.
And with the new Ignis AMT, it is clear that they have removed most of the kinks. The AMT on the petrol Ignis, which we have driven for the past five weeks and over 1,200 km in Delhi, dealing with 40 degree heat and endless traffic jams, has delivered a comfortable drive and has been frugal on the consumption front. Indeed, I have, I kid you not, never felt the urge to shift this car’s gearbox into the manual option. like all small Marutis, the Ignis handles beautifully and while some believe that it is a bit pricey, after living with this car for a while, it is worth the money.
More on that later, first a refresher course on AMTs. What is an AMTIJ Well, it is what it says it is — an automated manual transmission, which basically means that instead of your physical left foot pressing the clutch pedal, a mechanical servo motor does that. This is not a traditional torque converter automatic transmission. Although, thanks to the increased number of sensors and computing power onboard, most automatic transmission cars work fairly similarly now. In an AMT car, sensors sense not just road and engine speed but also how much pressure you are putting on the accelerator pedal to change gears. Unlike modern dual-clutch systems, which pre-engage the next gear and thus can change gears faster than a blink of an eye (really!) AMT shifts are more akin to an average driver changing gears, but over the years they are getting slightly faster. On the Ignis, while the occasional gearshift is still noticeable, particularly when you floor the accelerator, during normal city driving, gear shifts are very smooth and are almost never jerky. The Ignis K12 petrol has the best implementation of an AMT gearbox in India to date.
living with an AMT vehicle, you also realise that when you start driving such a car, you need to adapt your driving style a bit. In the sense that you do not need to switch to the manual mode to change gears up, you can play with the accelerator pedal to shift gears. Rev the engine up to around 2,500 revolutions per minute on a gear and then lift off the pedal slightly and the car usually moves up a gear. This felt very odd initially but then you get used to it. And driving like this, you discover that the Ignis AMT delivers extremely good fuel economy. Over 1,200 km driven in Delhi with the air-conditioner on almost 90 per cent of the time, the Ignis AMT delivered as you can see in the photograph, 13.4 kilometres per litre.
But the Ignis scores on other fronts as well. Not only does it look funky as we had mentioned during our first drive of the car, it has comfortable rear seats and a good enough luggage area as well for a small car. The Ignis, which is selling around 5,000 units a month according to Maruti executives, is a car that draws attention to itself and I’ve actually been asked about the car a couple of times at traffic lights.
The one complaint I have about this car is that Maruti-Suzuki does not sell the Ignis at the top-end “Alpha” spec, which comes with the touchscreen infotainment system complete with navigation as well as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support. While we tested the “Zeta” variant, which came with a more rugged look with the plastic cladding on the wheel arches as well as steering controls, iPod connectivity and Bluetooth, the AMT variant is also available on the more basic “Delta” variant. Now Maruti charges a Rs 50,000 premium for the AMT gearbox, which puts the “Delta” variant at Rs 5.74 lakh and the “Zeta” variant at Rs 6.3 lakh ex-showroom. The prices are, however, fairly similar to that of the Hyundai Grand i10 automatic.
And almost a third of the Ignis’ sold so far have the AMT gearbox. The normal fuel economy coupled with the ease of not having to operate the clutch in start-stop city traffic are very compelling arguments to get an automatic transmission vehicle. As for me, I will be fairly sad when this car goes back.