India’s Mahindra & Mahindra Limited is not very well known outside of its Asian sphere of influence. Still, the multinational corporation does count on globally recognized subsidiaries such as Italy’s Pininfarina or France’s Peugeot Motorcycles. Its core automotive strengths mostly lie within the SUV and light / heavy commercial vehicle sectors, so no wonder we are seeing the company expand its offering in the area with the all-new generation of its Thar off-roader.
You are not having a déjà vu. Nor have we made an error and uploaded the Jeep Wrangler gallery alongside our material on the new Mahindra Thar. Remember the scandal surrounding the Mahindra Automotive North America Roxor? Well, the latter was based on the first-generation Thar, presented back in 2010.
Now, the second-generation Thar is aiming to present itself as a “quantum leap in terms of performance, everyday comfort & convenience, technology, and safety,” while also keeping true to its “unmatched off-roading capability and iconic design.” The latter part is entirely relevant as to why M&M’s (the Indian auto company, not the iconic sweetie) Thar looks like the twin brother of an older Jeep Wrangler.
We cannot simply call the Mahindra Thar a duplicate clone of the Jeep Wrangler and call it a day. Things are a little more nuanced, and murky – as the company traces its roots to licensed assembly of old Willys Jeep and CJ-era models. As such, the Thar traces its roots back to a legal agreement and cannot be likened to Chinese copycats. Officially, this is not a total rip off.
But, off the record, this baby Jeep Wrangler is cuter than a Rubicon doing rock crawling in Moab, Utah. Sign us up for owning one when we travel to distant areas in India in search for the next great adventure.
Back to serious matters, as Mahindra has presented the all-new generation Thar to mark India’s 74th independence anniversary. The Indian patriots should also mark the Founders Day celebration as the official start of sales date for the new model. The latter is set to arrive with a lot of new features, power choices and innovative technologies for the series.
Under the hood of the Thar live just two engines – a gasoline 2.0-liter mStallion TGDi good for 150 hp or a bigger 2.2-liter mHawk CRDe diesel churning out 130 hp. Both have the same amount of torque – 320 Nm / 236 lb. ft. - and hook up to either a six-speed manual or automatic transmission that sends the power to all four wheels through a “Shift-on-the-Fly” manual 4x4 transfer case with available Low Crawl Ratio.
We do not mean to direct your attention any further towards Jeep Wrangler connections, but the Thar cannot help itself but emphasize them – Mahindra even tells us it has just about the same roof options: a hard top, a manual convertible top and a fixed soft top.
On the other hand, its matching off-road capabilities are something no one will dare mock – Mahindra's Thar competes on the Indian market with the iconic Suzuki Jimny and thus comes with beefy capabilities. The ground clearance reaches 226 mm (8.89 inches) when unladen, fording depth is of 650 mm (25.59 in.) and approach / departure / ramp over angles (41.8 / 36.8 / 27 degrees) are all very impressive.
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News