It only seems like yesterday that the alliance between Volkswagen and Suzuki had happened. There were all kinds of speculation about this will benefit both companies and also Maruti Suzuki. In fact, some of the motoring journos went overboard saying that some of Maruti’s small cars could be rebranded as VW models while Maruti and Suzuki found access to VW’s diesel engine technology. But today the alliance is on the rocks so much so that many business publications are predicting a separation. The Japanese are known to be fiercely independent and Osamu Suzuki is known to play hard ball. That is why in two wheelers the alliance between Suzuki and Kawasaki slowly dissolved without anything coming out of it as did the one with GM. Off late Suzuki has been courting Fiat for diesel engine technology and this has made business analysts believe that Suzuki-Fiat is a more natural dalliance because of similarity of portfolios. But we think that that could very well be the reason that Fiat and Suzuki don’t need each other. Suzuki needs small capacity diesel engines to fit its cars and Fiat has them. So the logical thing would be to buy engine tech and that is what Suzuki seems to be doing.