Anand Mahindra is one of India’s most prominent industrialists, and is quite active on the Social Media platform Twitter. Recently, a Twiiter user tweeted a couple of pictures taken 40 years apart, showing two Mahindra SUVs. Here’s what Mr. Mahindra had to say about the picture,
🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽 Messages like this are truly humbling. They fill you with gratitude—& an enormous sense of responsibility for a brand that people have placed their trust in over generations. I hope everyone at @Mahindra_Auto & @MahindraRise will fulfill this responsibility with pride. https://t.co/US8jWBsKCl
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) November 16, 2022
The Mahindra Jeep has been ubiquitous in India for over 50 years, since 1945, when Mahindra first began assembling Willys Jeeps under license from the American SUV maker. From civilians to government agencies, military and paramilitary forces, nearly everyone has encountered or ridden in a Mahindra Jeep over the years. Tough, reliable and hardy, these workhorses continue to ply in many parts of India, and some of them are over 5 decades old. Well, this is how the Mahindra group began.
Fast forward to now…
Mahindra now has some really well-engineered, aspirational cars, all of them homegrown, both in terms of design and manufacturing prowess. In fact, the flagship vehicle of Mahindra – the XUV700 – is what is in the picture that was tweeted to Mr. Anand Mahindra. Introduced last year, the Mahindra XUV700 has been a monster hit. Such has been demand that waiting times have hit the 2 year mark for specific variants.
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The XUV700 represents the pinnacle in automotive engineering for the Mahindra group. It features a host of outstanding features including advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), a massive panoramic sunroof, connected car technology, premium leather interiors and a set of powerful engines with beautifully matched gearboxes.
Engine options on the XUV700 include a 2.2-litre-4 cylinder mHawk Turbo diesel and a 2.0-litre-4 cylinder mStallion tGDi petrol. The diesel is available in two states of tune: 155 Bhp of peak power and 360 Nm of peak torque for the base MX trim, while all the other trims get 182 Bhp of peak power and 420 Nm (MT)/450 Nm (AT) of peak torque. The petrol powertrain puts out 197 bhp and 380 Nm of peak torque. Both engines get 6-speed manual and torque converter automatic transmission options. The diesel also gets an all wheel drive layout on the top-end trims. Lower variants of both the petrol and diesel XUV700 are front wheel driven.
A little history about the Mahindra group
Mahindra is an automaker that’s been around in India since 1945. The company was founded as Mohammed and Mahindra but one of its partners moved to Pakistan during partition, following which it was named Mahindra & Mahindra. Back in the day, Mahindra used to import and assemble Willys Jeeps, and had the rights to sell such Jeeps in India under the Mahindra brand. Eventually, Mahindra became a manufacturing powerhouse, not just engineering and building its own passenger vehicles but also building defense vehicles, electric vehicles and entering a range of other industries including banking, housing and information technology. The group now has revenues of tens of billions of dollars, and employs over 250,000 people across multiple countries.
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