My New Ride: Mahindra XUV 5oo

My requirement from a new car were fairly simple, it should be a SUV (Pseudo will do), it should be big, it should have seating for seven occupants.  The last requirement was not actually a requirement, as my family has 5 members including me and there are very few instances of us travelling together.  I think this was more do with a latent desire to do a road trip with friends, though there is an anti climax to this with my final selection of car.\

I had a budget of around 1.5 Million INR tops  There are hardly any choices in the net of this combination. I even tried deviating a bit from my original plan and included few sedans in bouquet of selection but these were eliminated at theoretical stage only. At this point I would like to add that this process of research, the whole anticipation of buying  something new is far more enjoyable compared to actual occurrence of the event.  I am sure most of you will agree with me on this point.,this budget and my requirement s don’t make for a great combination.

After doing lots of calculations at my end, spending endless amount of hours online on research, I finally zeroed upon Mahindra XUV 5oo, Tata Aria, Innova Crysta, Mahindra Marazzo.  I was not keen on the last two as their form factor is very MUVish. The Crysta was included into equation as my wife somehow likes it. I was somehow already sold on XUV, it is big, brute, has seven seats and has maximum amount of features out of all the shortlisted cars.

Out of the shortlisted cars I test drove only XUV and Crysta. Crysta was fantastic, the power delivery was something else even with smaller 2.4 engine option. The major drawback was high sticker price even for bare-bones model which was way beyond my already stretched budget.

So now the only thing to decide was the variant and color. I opted for W7 Variant, this is the mid variant comes equipped with all major safety features and only skips on ones like Sunroof, Alloy wheels etc.

Booked Silver but subsequently opted for White, my 2014 Terrano is also white, so I thought they would look cool together. It has been around 5 months, 7k+ kms. The car has the presence of a big car; interior is a pleasant place to be with all the features and nice ambiance.

Though after sales experience have been average at best, the car had a play in the steering column and there was constant rattle noise on bad patches. The part was replaced under warranty after a series of tweets to few concerned twitter handles. The car brings lots to the plate but I feel that few things could have been better, suspension for one. The car has the ability of make a shake of your internal on the bad roads. The car already has few rattles and I am sure that it won’t age well. These were few irritants on an otherwise decent wholesome package. I am learning to live with these.

Please feel free to ask in case you have any question regarding the XUV, I would be happy to help.