Mahindra TUV300 review, road test

Mahindra is India’s largest utility vehicle maker, and when UVs and SUVs are your bread and butter, you need to make sure you have all the bases covered. So, with the sudden emergence and booming popularity of the compact SUV segment, the company knew it needed to get a piece of the pie. It first had a crack at it with the Quanto, but this awkward looking and crude quasi-SUV based on a shortened Xylo chassis simply lacked any finesse. The TUV300 is underpinned by the new Scorpio’s chassis, and the strength and toughness that comes from using a traditional body-on-ladder-frame construction is its USP in a segment full of car-like monocoque crossovers. In fact, the ‘T’ in TUV stands for ‘Tough’. However, the trick up its sleeve is a cost-effective Automated Manual Transmission (AMT), which is a first for Mahindra, and also a first for an SUV in India. We put Mahindra’s latest baby through our rigorous road test to see just how tough it is.