October 01, 2026

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Premium

MARUTI SUZUKI BALENO

I magine, if you will, the unique engineering and commercial challenge facing the design teams tucked away in Maruti Suzuki HQ. You are tasked with updating a hatchback that routinely posts sales figures usually reserved for daily consumer staples like loaves of bread or instant noodles. It serves as the default, completely frictionless setting for millions of human beings--a vehicle acquired not out of a blinding, whitehot passion, but because it exists, it sips fuel with exceptional parsimony, and it possesses an almost stubborn mechanical durability that promises to outlive us all. When a car becomes that deeply embedded into the fabric of everyday life, messing with the formula is a terrifying prospect. Touch the wrong line, stiffen the suspension too much, or mess with the price, and you risk alienating the vast army of sensible citizens who just want to get to work without drama.So, what exactly do you do when the time inevitably comes for a mid-cycle facelift? You give it a larger, noticeably more assertive front grille and re-profile the headlamp clusters, presumably so it looks slightly more offended by the congested urban traffic flowing in front of it. They have also thrown in blacked-out A-pillars to create that fashionable floating-roof effect, and paint the exterior sheet metal in something called "Enigmatic Teal". It is an undeniably lovely shade of paint, though marketing a mass-market hatchback's colour as "Enigmatic" gently stretches the imagination, suggesting the car possesses deep, brooding secrets, when in reality its most profound existential secret is simply remembering where you put the spare wheel. Yet, on the road, these visual tweaks give the hatchback a sharper, far more modern presence that stops

MERCEDES-AMG E53 PHEV

Affalterbach built its entire reputation on a glorious brand of antisocial behavior: take a sensible executive saloon, shoehorn a hand-built V8 under the bonnet, and give it an exhaust note that could wake up neighboring zip codes. But we live in sensible times, which brings us to the new Mercedes-AMG E 53 PHEV. It claims to bridge the gap between green-tinted suburban responsibility and fire-breathing performance. Far from being an insane 63 with a twin-turbo V8 and a severe drinking problem, the E 53 positions itself as the ultimate form of expression for the 53 moniker. It is a fast, near 600-horsepower four-door saloon that you could genuinely drive to work every single day and back without using a single drop of fue.Under the bonnet sits a 3.0-litre straightsix engine tethered to a 28.6 kWh plug-in hybrid battery. On a normal day, this setup churns out a deeply respectable 577bhp. Pin the throttle in Race Start mode, however, and the electronics grant you a temporary madness of 604bhp. Because that electric grunt is backed by a proper 3.0-litre motor, the E 53 never feels sluggish or laid back, even before the petrol engine wakes up. Despite carrying enough batteries to power a small village, the sprint from 0 to 100 km/h is dealt with in a staggering 3.8 seconds. Should you wish to creep out of your driveway without alerting the local council, it offers over 100 km of pure electric range and will reach speeds of up to 140 km/h on pure battery power.Visually, the E 53 does not quietly slip into the background. It gets a muscular stance courtesy of a 22mm wider front track, flared