Mahindra will launch the TUV300 on September 10 and some dealerships have already started accepting bookings of the car at Rs 20,000. Our sources have confirmed that the car will be offered with an AMT gearbox and will be available in six new colours.
The six colours are bold black, glacier white, majestic silver, molten orange, dynamo red and verve blue. These colour shades will be different from the colours of the other Mahindra products sold currently. Mahindra is calling the TUV300 an 'Iconic true Blue SUV', which has a design inspired from a battle tank. The recent spyshots reveal the exterior design and features. Despite being a compact SUV, Mahindra has managed to put in two jump seats at the back like they did in the Quanto, making it a seven-seater.
The car will be available in mainly three variants - base, mid and high. Power steering, power windows, ABS and airbags will also be offered in the base and mid variant as an option, but will be offered as standard in the high variant. The mid variant will be available with body-coloured bumpers and customers can also opt for the AMT gearbox. The high variant will boast of all the equipment listed above and feature alloy wheels as well. The top variant will be available in all the six colours, the mid-variant in white, silver, black and red; but the base variant will be available only in silver, black and red.
Mahindra will power the car with the advanced mHawk 80 series of engines that have been developed in-house by the carmaker. The latest update is that apart from the five-speed manual gearbox, Mahindra will offer the AMT gearbox in this car, probably the same transmission option that they had shown in the Quanto at the 2014 Auto Expo.
Mahindra is still tight-lipped about the specifications of the TUV300. Exact variant-wise prices and specifications will be available on September 10. Nevertheless, we can expect the car to be priced in the range of Rs 7.5 lakh to Rs 9 lakh. The TUV300 will be positioned below the Bolero and open new avenues for Mahindra especially with the AMT gearbox. The company will likely offer this gearbox with some of the other products as well then. The TUV300 will rival the Ford EcoSport, Renault Duster and the Hyundai Creta in the compact SUV segment in India.