Personal experience & comparison of Wagon R VXL 2019 with Alto VXL AGS 2020

In my opinion living in a metropolis like Karachi creates need of having a compact vehicle at your home either it being your primary car or having it as a secondary car with your luxury sedan and/or SUV, specially when owning or using a motorcycle is not allowed. The criteria for such hatch back for me included the following points:
1- Car should be having good resale (as the car is going to be used extensively, thus should be changed frequently. Target 3 - 4 years for a brand new car)
2- Car should be economical to maintain.
3- Good fuel average
4- Should have company warranty (thus excluding the JDMs from my options)

Cutting the historical background short, the first brand new hatchback I purchased was a Mehran Euro 2 in 2013, which served us well for 4 years and we sold it in 2017 as I mentioned the target time period for the car was planned to be 3- 4 years. My plan was to replace the vehicle with another brand new Mehran but my family members completely rejected the stance, and we purchased a manual Suzuki Swift. I hated the swift as it consumed more fuel than my automatic sedan, it had lower ground clearance, and worst of all had higher maintenance cost as compared to my sedan whereas my younger siblings loved the vehicle for its power. Anyways, luckily we needed some money urgently so had to sell the fuel guzzler urgently by end of 2018.

At the time of purchase of Swift, we had considered Wagon R but rejected the vehicle as it lacked rear power windows, ABS and multimedia display. Though I rejected the swift too due to the fuel economy and higher taxes (as the car was above the slab of 1.3l vehicles due to 1350cc engine capacity) but had to buy the car urgently to save my beloved sedan.

Anyways after the swift we were sitting again on the drawing board, trying to sort out our next vehicle.

Color
The first criteria I forcefully implemented was to have the car in white color as it is very easy to do minor paint brush touchings on the bumper and body in case of scratches and also in case of touch-up you don't need to get the whole piece colored (even complete sides in case of metallic colors).

Budget
The maximum budget was set to 1.5 m

Options
1- Mehran (brand New)
2- FAW V2 (Brand New)
3- New shape Cultus VXL AGS (slightly used / suzuki certified vehicle)
4- Old Shape Cultus (Used with low mileage)
5- Wagon R VXL (brand new)
6- New shape Cultus VXR (brand new)

Finally we agreed on trying the Wagon R as there were many user reviews claiming excellent fuel average (upto 17 - 18 kmpl in city) and the car having good resale (in case we didn't like the car).

So in January 2019, a brand new Wagon R was added to our garage. The car disappointed us in the beginning due to the following two reasons:
1- The car felt too under-powered after regularly driving Swift
2- The fuel average, though much better than swift was not even near the over claimed numbers I saw in various owner reviews.

When the new alto was launched in June 2019 and I went through the specifications of the VXL version with the given price I thought Pak Suzuki have themselves launched the killer for their product known as Wagon R. The reason for my fears were;
1- Even the VXL Wagon R is under equipped (though loaded with ugly alloy rims and rear chrome chamak patti)
2- The VXL AGS of Alto provided Auto Transmission in lesser price than that of Wagon R VXL

Once the Alto was launched, I started observing the Wagon R more critically in terms of the fuel average as if it is not fulfilling the fuel average criteria, will swap it with Alto once the insurance tenure finishes. And as @chinyoti mentioned the results were not up to the mark at all, the car gave average of max 12 kmpl in city driving with light foot and not getting stuck in traffic jams. Similarly with the AC off and trying to save every drop of fuel in the car the wouldn't give anything above 14 - 15 kmpl.

In Nov and December 2019, petrol was around 114.8 Rs / lit so in refuel of PKR 1000, 8.7 lit of petrol was filled.The car would give at an average of 110 - 120 kms with AC off. With intermittent AC on (say less than 30% of total time) the car used to give 100 to 105 kms per 8.7 lit (or 1000 Rupees petrol).

As mentioned earlier, we use the hatchbacks as replacement of bikes it is very rare that more than 3 people sit in the car at one time. So having a lot of volume in the cabin was of no added advantage to us, thus we brought the new Alto home in January 2020. And sold the Wagon R after driving it for 22,200 Kms in one year.

Now starting to compare the two vehicles based on my experience Wagon R (22k kms) Alto (2k kms).

Equipment

The Alto VXL AGS comes with a lot of bell & whistles as compared to the Wagon R;
1- All four power windows in Alto as compared to only two front power windows in Wagon R
2- Auto Retractable power side mirrors as compared to manual side mirrors in Wagon R
3- Multimedia Unit with screen in Alto compared to simple Head Unit of Wagon R. (Bluetooth connectivity is available in both)
4- Multi information display like fuel average, instantaneous fuel average and range available in Alto and not available in Wagon R.
5- ABS and EBD in Alto - not available in Wagon R
6- two airbags in Alto none in Wagon R

But surely Wagon R comes with a few things which Alto is short of
1- Alloy Rims
2- RPM Meter.......... will discuss this in more detail

• More on Alto's RPM meter

The Japanese version of this Alto also doesn't come with RPM Meter (except for a few variants including RS Turbo, Works etc) but there is a light that changes color based on how hard you are pushing the engine (RPM). If you are used to watching the RPM needle while driving the car, it is very uncomfortable in beginning to drive a car without the RPM needle going up and down.