Mahindra Axe review, road test

It’s not every day that we at Autocar India get to test a prototype, and then write about it. But that’s exactly what our test of the Axe is — an opportunity to test-drive the first couple of prototypes of a barely finished vehicle.

Getting military vehicle-makers to localise ( the Indian the Army’s Request For Proposal (RFP) sets a 50 percent indigenisation clause) and transfer a majority of the technology is not the easiest thing in the world, far from it. There are masses of red tape to get through. Either the players convince their partners to transfer tech, or they go out and get it piecemeal. That’s what Mahindra Defence Systems has done. The Axe may be a military vehicle through and through with its butch exteriors and built-to-Army spec features, but underneath it is pure racing car — a combination of Paris-Dakar prototype race car and Baja dune buggy. This may strike you as strange, but remember some of the greatest military vehicles had racing in their DNA; the famous WWII Spitfire, for example, evolved from the Supermarine S.6B racing seaplane.

M&M’s consultant engineer for the project has vast experience in building off-roaders as well as Paris-Dakar racing prototypes. A designer of foreign origin who does not want to be named or known, he also has some experience in making military vehicles. And the racing car legacy is difficult to hide.

Strip the Axe down and what you have before you is pure competition machine. The chassis’s structure is not a ladder frame but a racing-car-like nest of thick steel tubes. Known as a spaceframe, this type of very stiff but light chassis has been the bedrock that racing cars have been built on for decades. For increased practicality, the Axe also has some box sections added on. The massive 305/70 R16 off-road tyres are each sprung independently by massive double wishbones, each of which look strong enough to knock out a bull elephant. Coil over shock Blistein racing struts are used at each wheel and the nitrogen-filled dampers and variable rate of the springs helps the Axe assault almost any sort of terrain.

Mahindra Axe: design

At 4.4 metres, the Axe is not very long, actually shorter than something like a Toyota Innova Crysta, but it’s the massive 1.9-metre width is almost commercial vehicle or truck-like. While M&M received some basic help on the design, a lot of the hardcore engineering was done here in India by Mahindra Defence Systems. The engineer in charge of R&D for MDS, Commander Narendra Katdare, is the one who actually integrated the various systems and even led the team which quickly designed the functional exteriors.