The Scorpio is a cult car in India. Evidence of this is manifested through the sheer bookings frenzy: the newly launched Mahindra Scorpio-N bagged one lakh bookings in just 30 minutes after the online bookings window opened sometime last week. So, you can imagine the kind of pressure Mahindra’s designers would have been under while designing the all-new Scorpio-N. Chief Design Officer at Mahindra, Pratap Bose, has just shared early sketches of the Scorpio-N on his Twitter handle. Here, take a look.
As the sketches indicate, the Scorpio-N is inspired by a scorpion, and the tail section of the SUV was given a flourish to resemble the sting of a scorpion. The final version of the SUV does have a few resemblances to the initial sketches, and this includes the prominent front grille, the pronounced wheel arches and also the kink beyond the C-Pillar. What we’d have liked to be carried over though are the wraparound tail lamps, which look a lot better than the X’mas tree units that have made it to production. To put it plainly, the Scorpio-N’s design is weakest from the rear, and the initial sketch looks a lot better.
The all-new Scorpio sits on a completely new body-on-ladder frame, and is offered in both rear wheel drive and four wheel drive trims. Four wheel drive options are limited to the diesel engine though. Talking of engines, the SUV gets 2 liter turbocharged petrol and 2.2 liter turbocharged diesel engine options. The 2 liter petrol makes a maximum of 197 Bhp-380 Nm while the 2.2 liter diesel pushes out 172 Bhp-400 Nm in its strongest avatar. Both engines get 6 speed manual and torque converter automatic gearbox options.
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7 seats are offered as standard while higher trims get a 6-seat layout, and the Scorpio-N’s cabin is a huge step up from the previous generation model. The dashboard has soft touch art leather while the seats are also leather clad in the top-end trims. Mahindra’s Adreno-X is offered with the infotainment system, and the top-end variants get a slew of safety features and creature comforts such as 6 airbags, rear parking camera, front parking camera, driver drowsiness detection system, cruise control, powered front seat, 12 speaker audio system from Sony and rear AC vents. The Mahindra Scorpio-N is designed as a tough SUV meant to handle whatever Indian road conditions can throw at it.
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