The first question I asked Rajesh Jejurikar, Executive Director and CEO, Auto and Farm sector, Mahindra & Mahindra, was why the automaker named their new SUV ‘Thar ROXX’. His answer revealed that the company was well on the way to calling this five-door vehicle the ‘Thar Five’, with Chief Design Officer Pratap Bose even creating a lot of marketing collateral for the branding of the SUV.
“But eventually we dropped the idea because we began to realise that this is so much more than just a five-door version of the Thar,” said Jejurikar.
And, after driving the Thar ROXX in and around Kochi and the backwaters in Kerala, I simply can’t disagree with Jejurikar. It is a fully loaded lifestyle vehicle that belongs to a segment where Mahindra did not have a presence—the 4.5-metre SUV segment that is dominated by the Hyundai Creta. With the base MX1 model with a petrol engine starting at just Rs 13 lakh, Mahindra is also making an aggressive price push for the Thar ROXX.
That said, I was driving the top AX7L variant with a diesel motor mated to a six-speed automatic gearbox with rear-wheel drive. The 2184 cc mHawk engine on the vehicle produces 172 bhp for the AX7L variant, while the lower variants—MX1 and MX3—with the same engine are restricted to 150 bhp.
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Feature-loaded
The price of the variant I drove has not been announced by Mahindra although the manual transmission variant of the AX7L is priced at Rs 19 lakh. Mahindra says that they are democratising the availability of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) by offering them with lower variants like AX3L and AX5L as well.
However, petrol engine options are not offered in the higher variants, which might disappoint buyers in the NCR where diesel vehicles over ten years old are not allowed to run. All variants get six airbags and the MX5 and AX5L variants even come with features like a 26-cm infotainment screen and digital instrument cluster.
Where the top AX7L variant stands out is its huge panoramic sunroof. At 1850 mm by 900 mm, Mahindra claims that this is the largest panoramic sunroof in the segment. And I must admit that it is huge and when it’s open, it gives the spacious interiors a very airy feel indeed. Although while driving this vehicle it was extremely sunny and I found myself appreciating another feature of this variant—the ventilated seats.
I also began to enjoy the music through the nine-speaker Harman Kardon sound system, which even had tweeters built into the door handles. This is a proper lifestyle vehicle that felt good on a road trip and I found myself leaving the convoy and heading off to the scenic backwaters of Alappuzha and Kumarakom.
During the 200-odd kilometres that I drove, I got a sense of the drivability of the Thar ROXX. It is nothing like the three-door Thar and that is evident not just in the features and the quality of the interiors, but also in how well Mahindra has managed the noise, vibration and harshness (NVH). With significant work on the insulation, the noise from the chunky all-terrain tyres that makes the three-door Thar irritating in the city is deadened in the new SUV. Engine vibrations and noise are also barely evident, especially when you’re listening to music.
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‘Woolly’ steering
As for the handling, one thing you must remember is that the Thar ROXX is a ladder frame vehicle. And for the engineering that has gone into making the SUV feel stable during high-speed turns, the steering does feel a bit ‘woolly’, never uncomfortably so. But one has to remember what sort of vehicle they are driving. It is a big, tall vehicle with some added weight on top, thanks to that panoramic sunroof, so steaming into corners isn’t advised. However, given that most new Indian highways are arrow-straight and average city speeds even in a place like Delhi rarely exceed 50 kmph, this will not be an issue.
Over the potholes and on rough roads, the vehicle performed the way SUVs are expected to—smothered them completely. And this ROXX has been engineered to be more comfortable than most SUVs. After all, it sits on Mahindra’s brand-new platform called M-Glyde. The ROXX is also surprisingly low on body roll despite a long 2850 mm wheelbase. The long wheelbase, though, does make the rear quite comfortable, particularly when you compare it to the cramped rear quarters of the three-door Thar. And this also means that the ROXX has decent luggage space.
Hence, if speed and handling are the key attributes to desire in a vehicle, this one is not for you. If comfortable driving with a bunch of features is what you desire, you can’t really do worse. In fact, I would argue that the combination of features and price make the Thar ROXX a better value SUV than something like the Scorpio-N.
Now, I have to admit that I did not go off-roading in the new Thar. Mahindra claims that this is a capable off-roader but they also realise that most buyers will only drive it on decent roads with the ever so occasional rough patch.
Jejurikar said that the Thar three-door sales of the 4×4 and rear-wheel drive (RWD) variants were shared 50:50, but for this longer SUV he expects the RWD variant to have three quarters of share.
As for cannibalisation of the Scorpio-N and even the XUV700 by the Thar ROXX, Jejurikar told me that Mahindra only had a 26 per cent share of the SUV market for vehicles priced above Rs 12.5 lakh and even if some sales of other Mahindra vehicles were affected, he expects the ROXX to help them capture larger share of this profitable market. Little wonder that Mahindra has been one of the best performing large companies on India’s share indices.
But I never got a clear answer to why the new SUV was named ‘Thar ROXX’.
@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)