Maruti Suzuki-Swift plans to continue as king of hatchbacks

A few years ago, the country's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki had two choices.

It could continue flogging its old war horse, the Swift, which was launched in 2005, for a few more years and sell similar volumes, even though it was aware that the product cycle of cars are increasingly shrinking.

Or it could make a conscious decision to be ahead of its product cycle curve and replace it by a completely revamped car much before consumers got bored with the old one and stopped buying it entirely.