A (street) car named Dzire has overtaken the ubiquitous yellow Ambassador as Calcutta's taxi of choice, a change of guard borne out by a 100 per cent growth in the sale of Maruti Suzuki's most popular sedan.

Maruti had left its tyreprint on the taxi scene long before Hindustan Motors called a halt to the production of the Ambassador in 2014. It's just that the Dzire Tour's trot has turned into a gallop over the past year.

The Dzire Tour is now the No. 1 four-wheel contract carriage on Calcutta roads, be it as a no-refusal taxi, an air-conditioned app cab or a radio taxi. Every other Ola cab is a Dzire and so are most UberX vehicles. The desire to put a Dzire Tour taxi on the road is reflected in the sales figures.

"This segment (Dzire Tour) has seen 100 per cent growth," said K. Banerjee, regional manager of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.

The first quarter of 2015-16 alone saw 978 units being sold. "And this is despite zero sales in the month of April, when there was a freeze on offer letters for cabs from the regional transport authority. We sold 978 units in May and June," said another senior company official.

In the same period last year, Maruti had sold 450 units of the Dzire Tour.

Although neither Uber nor Ola owns a fleet of taxis - in the app-cab business, they are aggregators - officials of both companies have apparently met Maruti officials to request higher availability of the Dzire Tour.

"They are asking for volumes that we cannot meet because of production constraints. Nationally, we used to sell 1,000 units of the Dzire Tour a month two to three years ago. We are now doing 3,500 and yet have long waiting lists," the official said.

Maruti sells 500 units a month of the Dzire Tour on an average, 95 per cent of which is in the luxury cab segment, according to Rahul Dutta, the company's institutional sales manager.

"For luxury cabs, operators need an all-Bengal permit that is issued by the transport department. For metered taxis, they need a Calcutta permit issued by the public vehicles department (PVD)," he said.

Sanjay Patodia of Austin Motors, which had been an Ambassador distributor till the last car rolled out of the shop floor, said Maruti was reaping the benefits of being the "first mover".

"Taxi permits have been granted to the Tata Manza, the Indigo CS as well as the Fiat Linea, the Ford Figo and the Toyota Etios. But how many numbers do you see of the Manza, the Indigo or even the Etios? Negligible," Patodia said.

Taxi operators who have switched to the Dzire Tour couldn't be happier that their trips to the mechanic - and the fuel pump - have come down. Shiv Chandra Singh of Shiva Enterprises, which has around 50 Dzires on the road, said: "My father used to run Ambassadors since 1972 until we shifted to the Dzire Tour a few years ago. I have a Dzire that has run 1,33,000km and I have changed the engine oil just once and the brake pads on another occasion."

The Dzire scores in terms of passenger comfort and ease of driving too, although some would argue that the thick gauge of the metal used in the Ambassador made it a safer vehicle to be in.

But that's all in the past. The Ambassador is no longer available and the Dzire Tour is cruising along to become Calcutta's favourite taxi.