Opinion: Decoding Mahindra Scorpio N’s tough-as-nails image

There are cars and there are SUVs. There are SUVs and there are Daddies. There are Daddies but only one Big Daddy.

 

For those of you who have watched stuff like Wasseypur and Mirzapur, am sure you get the drift. The Big Daddy of SUVs has been launched, trench coat and all. So what if the Uzis were missing and you still sit yogic in the third row? It’s anyway meant to store stuff that needs to stay hidden!

 

If India had a ‘gangsta’ car, it would be the Scorpio. Black colour. Black glasses. Black clothes. Black sunglasses. You have the police in a white Scorpio chasing the baddie in a black one. And then if you are an undercover cop… black one. ‘Nothing else will do.’ It’s been a perennial favourite of those who serve the law as well as those who live above it.

 

Its positioning has been the same since 2002. All about brawn. All about a “don’t mess with me” attitude. I still remember the advertisements shot in Russia, with all the machoism it tried to portray and the symbolisms of the oligarchs and men in black suits. 

 

After two decades, it continues with the same imagery even though the vehicle has technically made massive progress, as the initial reports indicate. It appeals to a certain customer segment that lives that imagery and there is a certain air the vehicle carries. Whether good or bad is beyond the scope of this piece of writing.

 

Between the Bolero and the XUV series, the Scorpio could not even choose another space even if it wanted to. The Bolero is all about functional ruggedness. The XUV series is all about being suave and urbane. Kia has taken away the spaces of being ‘badass’ or wicked. The Scorpio has to continue being the brawny one. It cannot also choose to be the ‘Protective Daddy’. In an India where a KGF or RRR is a super success, this is the vehicle that Rocky should be driving in chapter 3.

 

All this is perfectly fine, as long as you do not make the obvious blunder of comparing it with a “D-SUV” feature by feature. You have fallen into the trap, trench coat and all. 

 

The price a customer pays for a vehicle is not just for the number of speakers, size of touchscreens or how many seats it had, but for the brand, build quality, reliability, refinement, service quality and overall customer experience. And that takes a lot of expertise and commitment just not wished away by a PowerPoint slide. By then Don would have moved from Mirzapur to Marine Drive!