FILL IT. SHUT IT. FORGET IT.

As car reviewers, we usually get enough seat time in new cars to form a conclusive opinion. And over time, you start recognising a pattern — no matter how glossy the brochure, no matter how all-new the model claims to be, manufacturers rarely stray from their core values. For example, VW & Skoda remain driver's cars. Tata & Mahindra excel at design and tech. Hyundai & Kia are the dependable all-rounders. Honda & Toyota lean on legacy and reliability. And Maruti Suzuki? Well... spend a few days behind the wheel of any of their new cars and you'll instantly understand why they continue to dominate the market. Maruti is synonymous with fuel efficiency, and after all these years, nobody has managed to match them, let alone beat them.

- SHIVANK BHATT

All of this hit me over the past three weeks while living with our latest long-term member — the Maruti Suzuki Victoris. We're running the top-spec ZXI+ (O) strong-hybrid, and in this short time, I haven't refuelled it even once. It arrived with a full 45-litre tank, I've already clocked around 550km, and the gauge still shows half a tank left — with an estimated 400km of range to go. The MID hovers around 21 km/l, and honestly, I have zero reason to doubt it.