Maruti Suzuki S-Cross launched at a starting price of Rs 8.34 lakh

There has been a burst in the segment of compact SUVs in India and after we saw the likes of the Renault Duster, Ford EcoSportand the Nissan Terrano, there are some more surprises in this compact car segment coming soon. We recently saw the newHyundai Creta and the Maruti Suzuki S-Cross and both these cars are going to take this segment to a whole new level. We take a look at the specifications of all these competitors to check out who has the edge.

When it comes to overall length the Renault Duster has the edge followed by the the Maruti Suzuki S-Cross. The Creta comes in a close third while the EcoSport falls into the sub-4 metre segment. However, the EcoSport grabs some points back into its kitty by being the tallest car of the lot, followed by the Duster, then the Creta and finally the S-Cross.

The dimensions of the cars play a major role when it comes to the space they have on offer inside the car and this is where the measurement of the area between the wheels comes in handy. The battle of the wheelbase is won fair and square by the Duster which has 2673mm on offer while the S-Cross follows suit by offering 2600mm of usable space. The final two slots are filled by the Creta and the EcoSport.

Another thing to look at when it comes to such cars and considering that they're coming to India is ground clearance and the Duster is the clear winner here. The EcoSport comes in a close second, but the fight here is between the Creta and the S-Cross.

The Creta has more ground clearance to offer than the S-Cross and though it is a crossover, the S-Cross sits lower even than the i20 Active and the Toyota Etios Cross.

Moving on to the engines that are on offer. The Hyundai Creta will be offered with three engine options - 1.4-litre CRDi diesel, 1.6-litre CRDi diesel and 1.6-litre VTVT petrol - the Hyundai Creta will be launched in a total of four trim levels - Base, S, SX and SX (Optional). While the 1.4-litre diesel engine-equipped model will come with a 5-speed manual gearbox, the 1.6-litre diesel and 1.6-litre petrol-engined models will get a 6-speed manual and a 6-speed automatic transmissions.

The S-Cross promises a punchy 1.6 litre DDiS - sourced from Fiat - with 118 bhp on tap. In Europe the SX4 S-Cross, as it is called, also offers the choice of a CVT. The other engine on offer is the 1.3-litre DDiS which is good for 88bhp and 200Nm of torque.

Renault offers the Duster in the 1.5-litre diesel guise with two states of tune, the 84bhp and the 109bhp. The EcoSport comes with a 1.5-litre petrol, 1.5-litre diesel and the award winning 1.0-litre EcoBoost engine.

The EcoSport with the EcoBoost engine was the most powerful of the lot; however, it isn't much in demand considering it comes at a price. The Duster therefore could be considered as the powerful one in this segment but with the entry of the Creta and the S-Cross all that is about to change. The Creta is the most powerful of the lot followed by the S-Cross and this will certainly change the scenario in this segment.

When it comes to pricing, all the four cars are priced closely to one another and it'll all come down to what more they can offer their customers in terms of features, safety and service. The battle is about to begin and since we've already driven the Creta, we are really interested in what the S-Cross has to offer.

Here's a list of 5 things that you should know about the S-Cross.

1. The S-Cross will not wear Maruti Suzuki badge like others cars. Instead, it will just have the Suzuki logo and model name written.

2. The S-Cross is based on the SX4 hatchback, that never came to India. However, in some European markets, the hatchback was replaced by the crossover. That said, India will only get the crossover but with some design and mechanical changes.

3. Unlike the global model's 3-piece horizontal slat grille, the Indian version will have two slats. Also, it will have increased ground clearance than the European model.

4. Since the S-Cross will share its cabin with the Swift, it will have the same all-black interiors with silver inserts.

5. The Indian version of the crossover will be powered by a different set of engines when compared to its European counterpart. While the European version is available with 1.6-litre petrol and diesel motors, the Indian version will get two diesel engines - 1.3-litre and 1.6-litre multijet - both of which have been sourced from Fiat.

Maruti Suzuki's first ever premium crossover - the S-Cross - launched in the price of range Rs. 8.34 lakh - Rs.13.74 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). Though it's a crossover, it will rival the Hyundai Creta, Renault Duster, Nissan Terrano, Mahindra Scorpio and other SUVs falling in the same price bracket. The S-Cross comes with two engine options - 1.3-litre multijet & 1.6-litre multijet - both of which have been sourced from Fiat.

Maruti has already received 6,000 confirmed bookings and 35,000 inquiries for the vehicle, which is available in two engine options. The 1.3-litre DDiS 200 is priced Rs 8.34 lakh - Rs 10.75 lakh, while higherpowered 1.6-litre DDiS 320 costs between Rs 11.99 lakh and Rs 13.74 lakh in Delhi. "We have got a good initial response from the market. We are targeting the premium segment for the first time as a 45 per cent market share in the passenger vehicles market leaves us vying for the other 55 per cent of market currently not with us," Maruti CEO Kenichi Ayukawa told reporters. 

Price: 8.34 Lakhs - 13.74 Lakhs (Ex showroom price)

2015 Kawasaki Ninja H2R

Brace for impact! Kawasaki has crashed the party again, this time with a 300-horsepower supercharged motorcycle for closed-course operation only. No muffling, no emissions, no DOT.

Again? In 1972, in the middle of a sleeping market much like today’s, Kawasaki released its super powerful H2 two-stroke triple, which was absolutely the most bang for the buck available. Nothing could stand against it. The racing H2R version of that triple now gives its name to the 300-horse Kawasaki unveiled today at INTERMOT 2014, the motorcycle show in Cologne, Germany.

The motorcycle market has been steadily moving upscale for years, with manufacturers aiming products at those with disposable income. The farther this process goes, the more radical and exotic must be the offering to give those buyers a reason to act. The old mass market and commodity motorcycles are losing traction. Kawasaki knows that strong identity is central to success in future. Here it is.

NOT JUST A STRAIGHT-LINE MACHINE
Kawasaki’s press release makes it clear that the new Ninja H2R is not another slow steering, power-laden straight-liner. Moreover, its engine is a “a compact design similar to power units found in the supersport category.” And the only way to pack big power into a small package is to supercharge—to stuff into a modest-size engine all of the fuel-air mixture of a much larger engine. The chassis has trellis construction, and the bodywork, which must be right for high-speed stability, comes from the wind tunnel.

Supercharging—compressing air before delivering it to the engine intakes—raises the temperature of that air. When Kawasaki supercharged the 1500cc ZX-14-based engine of its Ultra 300X watercraft, the company used a blower similar to those seen atop every Top Fuel drag car. Such Roots blowers are effective across an engine’s rpm range but they generate a lot of heat. Pushing hot air into an engine pushes its combustion toward detonation, the destructive abnormal combustion that blasts metal off of cylinder heads and pistons. That was no problem on the watercraft, which have unlimited cold water available for operation of a charge air cooler, or “intercooler” (people like the term, but it’s actually a misnomer. On wartime aircraft piston engines, multi-stage supercharging systems were common, and a cooler placed between stages was therefore called an intercooler. When there is only one stage of supercharging, engineers prefer to call it a “charge air cooler”).

Where would you put an intercooler on a bike? And how would you duct a high volume of cooling air into and out of it?

Kawasaki therefore chose the most efficient of all blower types, a centrifugal supercharger. The more efficient the blower, the less it heats the air it compresses (isn’t that almost always where wasted energy goes, into heat?). In a centrifugal blower, a rotating disc carrying tapered radial vanes on one or both of its faces rotates at high speed. Air entering along the axis is flung outward by the vanes and is accelerated to very high speed, typically somewhat more than the speed of sound, which is 1087 feet/second at sea level). Air flung from the vanes enters a surrounding scroll-shaped passage in which velocity energy becomes pressure energy. The special capabilities of Kawasaki Heavy Industries’ Gas Turbine and Machinery Co. were called upon in the design of this supercharger. Yes, Kawasaki produces both jet engines and electricity-generating turbines.

FEEL THE HEAT
A Kawasaki ZX-10R superbike engine of 998cc displacement takes in roughly 7,000 liters of air per minute. But if a compressor forces twice that volume of air into it, its horsepower will double. A limit is set to this process by heat. As the combustion flame spreads from the spark plug, expansion of hot combustion gas compresses the unburned charge remaining. As unburned charge is heated by this compression, pre-flame chemical reactions within it accelerate. If these reactions go far enough, bits of unburned charge go off before the flame front reaches them, generating shock waves of sonic-speed combustion that make the noise we call “combustion knock,” or detonation. The destructive effects of detonation set limits to our power hunger. Typically, compression ratios of supercharged engines are lower than those of unsupercharged engines to subject the fresh charge to less heating, thereby staving off detonation. Supercharged aircraft engines of WW II typically had compression ratios around 7:1, while engines of F1’s first turbo era ran at about 9.5:1. Splitting the difference, we get about 8.25:1.

Won’t this lowered compression reduce engine torque? You bet, but maybe around-town performance is unimportant for a track-only bike. Or this may further support the idea that Kawasaki has torque-flattening technologies we have yet to see.

Many of us have seen the Kawasaki patent drawings and text available on the Internet. They show the supercharger drive packaged into the space behind the cylinder block of a transverse in-line engine. Gear teeth cut into one of the engine’s flywheels turn a jackshaft behind the cylinder block. That shaft in turn drives a shaft above it, ending in a compact planetary step-up drive just before the centrifugal impeller itself. The impeller is small, as the very similar-in-concept impeller from one of my R-4360 aircraft engines has a diameter of only 14 inches (4360 cubic inches, by the way, is 71 times the displacement of a ZX-10R). Compressed air output from the blower’s scroll housing flows upward, pressurizing the intake airbox above it (which is presumably something more robust than the usual Samsonite-looking ABS structure). In Cosworth fashion, we can expect normal-looking throttle bodies and bellmouth intakes, projecting up into the box from the engine’s cylinder head. Cosworth engineer Keith Duckworth once said that a supercharged engine is just a normal engine operating at the bottom of a really deep mine (where air pressure is higher).

SLOWING DOWN THE BLOWER
Although patents are written as broadly as possible, what we can see on the web shows a dog-shifted two-speed drive to the supercharger shaft. Why? This might be because the output of a centrifugal blower increases as the square of rpm. Thus, if the blower was delivering a modest 5 psi of boost (that’s 5 psi above atmospheric) at 6,000 rpm, it would be trying to deliver 20 psi boost at 12,000.

Why not just go with that? One problem: The resulting torque curve would rise so steeply that it would make the bike unrideable. One way to change that is to run the supercharger on a high ratio at lower engine rpm, and then at some point shift to a lower ratio to limit top-end torque to something usable. Best of all would be a continuously variable supercharger drive that could keep boost constant for improved rideability.

Also seen in one of Kawasaki’s teaser videos is an audio track of the Ninja H2R accelerating with soprano whine through the gears, emitting little squeaks at each shift. This is the sound of the airbox pressure relief valve, venting excess pressure. The rpm sounds high, so I’m sure those of you with hand-held oscilloscopes have displayed a pressure trace to reveal the rpm (In 2007, at the first test of the then-new 800cc MotoGP bikes at Valencia, a knot of Yamaha techs had an oscilloscope down at the far end of the pit straight, harvesting the free sonic information).

Why not just turbocharge a ZX-10R? Same objection: Turbo power is very hard to make rideable, which makes it even more certain that Kawasaki has one or more torque-flattening technologies in the H2R. And another thing: We know some of the measures Kawasaki has had to take to make ZX10-R-based Superbikes reliable at 220 horsepower. But with 36 percent more power, and as a product offered to the public, the H2R must have received major beefings-up in all departments.

KEEPING IT CONTROLLED
Aside from providing “the kind of acceleration no rider has experienced before,” Kawasaki also wanted a chassis and aerodynamics that would deliver “unflappable stability,” “cornering performance,” and what the company calls “an accommodating character.” The H2R is to be an all-around motorbike, and for that reason it can be expected to carry civilizing electronics, including KTRC traction control, KEBC engine braking control, and KLCM launch control. That stated, racing slicks on the 17-in. wheels remind us that this a track bike.

Extensive aero work was done at Kawasaki’s Gifu wind-tunnel facility (back when we were racing the original H2Rs, our technician, Kazuhito Yoshida, told us “At Gifu, many smart guys.”). The result? “Wind tunnel-sculpted bodywork” that’s very different from the design-college exercises currently thought of as “streamlined.” I’m glad, because I am heartily tired of the conformism of sharp edges, points, and scoops so studiously cribbed from corroding 1950s jet fighters.

HOW FAST? REALLY?
How fast will 300 horsepower drive a motorcycle? Back in 1973, our H2Rs made about 90 hp and reached just over 170 mph. As speed increases roughly as the cube root of the horsepower ratio (which is 300/90 = 3.33), that suggests 1.5 x 170 = 250 to 260 mph. But come back to earth: If we geared the H2R for that dreamland top speed, we’d be shifting out of first at 110 mph!

The chassis chosen for this creation is a steel-tube trellis design. In the words of Kawasaki: “The frame needed to be stiff, yet had to absorb external forces encountered while riding in the ultra-high speed range.” All motorcycle manufacturers now study and quantify the stiffness of their chassis in various planes, so when they state that “a new trellis frame was developed using the latest analysis technology,” they are talking about something real. As compared with a classic twin-aluminum-beam Cobas-type chassis, a trellis presents much less obstruction to airflow over and around the engine, which can be responsible for up to 10 percent of the cooling.

WHAT NEXT?
If, in 1972, if we had reasoned backward from H2R to H2, we’d have proposed there must be a street-legal H2 production bike. So there was. We don’t have to look for perturbations in the orbit of Neptune to suggest the existence of “something else out there” when we consider this new Ninja H2R. So we wait and see.

The present motorcycle market desperately needs this poke in the eye. Wake up and take notice! Get cracking! When we look at the current crop of 1000s, all date from before our present “recession,” and what little has come by way of new product has sought to please the mostly imaginary “new buyer” with low-tech delights. This makes me recall long-ago auto writer Tom McCahill, who once referred to US auto engines of his era as “dehydrated panda sixes and squirrel hormone eights.”

Kawasaki is proud of this creation, and is allowing the H2R to bear the River Mark logo, a symbol from the KHI Group that dates back to the 1870s. Its use, we are told, is “limited to models with historical significance.”

The future of the motorcycle? It will be whatever the market chooses.

SPECIFICATIONS
	2015 Kawasaki Ninja H2R
ENGINE	Supercharged inline-four, liquid-cooled
DISPLACEMENT	998cc
SUPERCHARGER	Centrifugal, scroll-type
MAXIMUM POWER	approximately 300 hp
FRAME	Trellis, high-tensile steel
FRONT TIRE	120/600R-17 (racing slick)
REAR TIRE	190/650R-17 (racing slick)