Mahindra bakkies are well known for their rugged toughness and go anywhere ability. More recently, the Indian marque have launched some of their cars and SUV's onto the South African market.
Following the opening of an assembly plant outside Durban in 2018, Mahindra showed that they are fully committed to SA, with the slogan "Indian by birth, South African by choice" prominently displayed in the facility.
Recently, the new generation XUV300 was launched and the test vehicle was my first experience of the brand.
Falling into the compact SUV segment, the XUV offers a choice of 1.2L petrol or 1.5L diesel engines, both turbo boosted.The test car was the diesel version with the top W8 spec level.
The diesel offers 86kW and an excellent 300Nm of torque providing excellent performance in all circumstances, whether urban use or open road cruising.
The 6 speed manual gearbox is typically smooth and easy in operation, but, as always, for city use I would prefer an automatic. At this stage only the manual is being offered and I think Mahindra need to seriously consider adding an auto to the range.
Being the top specification version means that all the bells and whistles are included as standard. From a sunroof, touchscreen infotainment system with navigation to leather upholstery. Typically for Indian built vehicles, the upholstery and much of the trim is in very light colours. While this certainly makes for lighter surroundings, keeping clean and looking new will always be a challenge. Even more so in family use.
A typical challenge for compact SUV's is space utilisation with the choice between rear seat and boot space. Mahindra have chosen to maximise the cabin at the expense of load space resulting in only around 240L with all seats in use. Obviously, the rear seats can be dropped to create extra load space if needed.
Similarly to many new brands entering our market, the biggest challenge for Mahindra is to get potential buyers to consider the car against the traditional rivals. As always, price is key and the XUV 300 certainly offers value for money in the segment.
The XUV 300 range starts at R249 999 with the test vehicle priced at R324 999. These prices include a 5 year/ 90 000km service plan.
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