Force Motors Dealer to CarToq – Gurkha SUV to be launched in June 2014

The Force Gurkha was unveiled more than a year ago and the SUV is yet to make it to showrooms across India. Issues with the production version of the off roader are the reasons for the delay in launch of the Gurkha and Force Motors seems to have fixed most of the problems seen on pre-production Gurkhas

CarToq contacted a Force Motors dealer in Maharashtra, who asserts that the Gurkha will be officially launched in June 2014. Both BS3 and BS4 versions of the Gurkha will go on sale. However, bookings for the Gurkha haven’t been opened yet.

The Gurkha’s only real competition will come from the Mahindra Thar off roader, which has been doing very well for Mahindra with average sales of over 600 monthly units despite the small target market for this vehicle. Coming back to the Force Gurkha, the off roader will be powered by a 2.6 liter-4 cylinder turbo diesel engine in two different states of tune, for the BS3 and BS4 variants.

The BS3 version of this engine will output 80 Bhp-230 Nm while the BS4 version is expected to output a few more horses, with about 100 Bhp on tap. Both hard top and soft top versions of the Gurkha will be sold in India. The Gurkha’s lower end variants will be rear wheel driven while the top end models will get a four wheel drive system, replete with a low ratio transfer case.

From the view of the off road enthusiast community in India, the Force Gurkha is quite an important launch as it represents an SUV with a factory fitted hard top, a feature that is missing on the Mahindra Thar. Perhaps Mahindra will take cue from the Gurkha and introduce a hard top version of the Thar if the off roader from Force Motors manages to eat away the Thar’s sales. Whatever be the case, higher competition is always good for the customer.