Mahindra Thar CRDe Driven

The Thar is a lot like an old rock band – as classic as classic gets, retrocool to some and as it turns out, still commanding quite the fan following. In 2010, when Mahindra launched the Thar, it was one of the most affordable off-roaders around and by off-roader standards, the most comfortable as well. It was almost as tough as your old boots, your wife wouldn’t divorce you after a ride in one and most importantly, it had a large part to play in the revival of the off road community in the country. All.Very.Good.Things. Problem was, even after it’s ‘modernisation’ it was still quite barebones and there were aspects to it that made you wonder why M&M didn’t think a few things through.

Cue, the 2015 Thar facelift and to start with, you can now climb into one and not feel like you’re in someone’s afterthought. Of course it’s no Passat on the inside, but the improvements are significant. Get into the driver’s seat and you’ll like the three-pod instrument cluster and the cool blue backlit dials. To be honest, it couldn’t really have gotten much worse than the round face instrumentation on the old version. The front seats still reminisce of flat chairs, but have a lot more cushioning to make them more comfortable, while the rear benches are … well … exactly that – benches.

About now, if you have driven a Thar before, you will realise something’s not quite right. The steering on the old Thar was quite offset from the seat and that has now been fixed. Also, the old truck-esque steering wheel has been dropped for a smaller, chunkier wheel from the new Bolero. Standard equipment (apart from air conditioning and power steering) includes a lockable glovebox, 12V socket, even cup holders, but we’re not sure if we like the beige and black colour theme on the dashboard. Beige in a Thar is like mud-tyres on a Ferrari. It simply doesn’t fit with the character.

And, for those of you wondering whether you can swap out the old dashboard for the new one in your Thar, tough luck. It is possible, but you’ll have to perform major surgery thanks to the repositioned steering column and the new wiring harness in this new Thar. Now for the meaty bits. Standard with the new Thar is an Eaton mechanical locking differential. It locks automatically when it senses a wheel speed difference of 100rpm between the left and right wheels and it does make the Thar more capable off-road. It may not give you the control you get with a manually lockable differential but, then again, it doesn’t have some of the maintenance hassles of the manual locking differential either. With the Eaton M-locker, you just have
to adjust your driving style to get it to lock when you need it to. This, along with low-ratio, fourwheel- drive, make the Thar quite formidable in capable hands, like those of our very own Off Road Chacko’s.

What’s annoying is that Mahindra still hasn’t cleaned up the underside of the Thar. There’s a clutch hose that sticks out under the chassis rails and it is prone to getting torn off-road and leave you stranded. Then there’s the transfer case that still hangs quite low and limits the rampover angle. There’s no sump guard and they could have re-routed the exhaust pipe to make it less prone to snagging bits of terrain. Happily, the USP’s remain. The engine is unchanged, so you get the 105bhp, 2.5-litre common-rail engine and a five-speed manual that needs some effort to use but rewards with a lovely mechanical shift feel. The engine is smooth and punchy, NVH levels have improved and thanks to additional body reinforcements that Mahindra introduced in the Thar a while back, the body is less prone to rattling over time.

Oh, and one more thing. If you’re wondering why there’s so much more plastic surrounding the bumper and grille, it’s because of new safety norms that state there can’t be any gaps between the bumpers and the wheelarch. Also, the bigger plastic wheelarches are designed to allow owners to fit bigger tyres without them hitting and bending the fenders when the suspension compresses but, they also mean you now need to fit bigger tyres as standard. On the stock Bridgestone H/T’s the Thar looks very undertyred. And why can’t Mahindra supply all-terrain tyres as standard? The Thar is an offroader isn’t it?
On the whole, the new Thar is much improved. It is leagues ahead of its predecessor in terms of quality, is more capable off-road – and it costs just Rs. 7000 more. Not that Rs. 8.03 lakh (ex showroom) is cheap but ultimately the Thar is something you buy and then have a blast customising to what you think it should be. It’s a great canvas that is now more polished.

Words: Dipayan Dutta