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NEW DELHI, Dec. 31

MARUTI Udyog Ltd is sprucing up the Baleno and its station wagon version, the Altura, to give a fillip to the sagging sales of recent times, a company official said on Monday.

Thirteen-inch alloy wheels, rear spoiler with stop-lamp, remote keyless entry and alarm system, power antenna, wood finished instrumentation panel, leather cover on steering wheel are some of the features that have been added to the cars.

Baleno and Altura will now be a bit more dearer after the spruce-up exercise.

The Baleno will now cost Rs 7.78 lakh in New Delhi showrooms as against Rs 7.49 lakh for the previous version.

The Altura will now cost Rs 8.33 lakh as against Rs 8.12 lakh of the earlier version.

Maruti, a joint venture between the Indian Government and Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp, had launched the Suzuki Baleno in November 1999 to take on competition offered by the Opel Astra, Honda City and Mitsubishi Lancer.

The Altura was launched in September 2000 and to date competes with only two more station wagon cars, the Fiat Siena Weekend and the Opel Swing.

The country's largest car maker so far has managed to sell about 5,500 units of both models put together.

``Although this is not such a bad performance, the sales numbers of these models have not been encouraging in the recent past,'' said the official.

Analysts said the Baleno had been suffering from an image problem compared with offerings of General Motors, Honda, Mitsubishi and Ford.

``It was imperative for Maruti to do something for the Baleno,'' a Mumbai-based analyst told Business Line.

Maruti has been paying a lot of attention of late to boost the sagging sales of the Baleno.

It had asked many dealers to give better displays for the Baleno and offer more frequent and easier test drive programmes for the sedan.

``There was a problem at the dealer end earlier as many dealers were not keeping sufficient stocks of the car either for display or for offering test drives. We are rectifying that and have issued advertisements to encourage test drives,'' a Maruti official said.

The move comes shortly before an imminent price hike by the company.

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