Nilay Desai of Surat has just bought a Tata Harrier, in top-end XZ+ trim, and is among the first people to drive home the white coloured version of this SUV. Mr. Desai has already covered 2,000 kilometers on the Harrier, which means that he’s in a fair position to comment about the good and bad bits of the SUV. Mr. Desai compares the Harrier with the likes of the Hyundai Creta, Mahindra XUV500 and the Jeep Compass. Here, watch the review for yourself.
The Tata Harrier’s top-end XZ+ trim is priced at Rs. 16.25 lakhs, ex-showroom Delhi, while the base XE variant starts from just Rs. 12.69 lakhs. All variants of the Harrier use the same engine and gearbox combination, and the key differences in the SUV have to do with the feature-set on offer rather than anything else. The engine of the SUV is a 2 liter Fiat Multijet turbocharged unit that also does duty on the Jeep Compass.
On the Harrier, this engine is tuned to output 140 Bhp of peak power and 350 Nm of peak torque. These outputs are lower than that of the Jeep Compass (170 Bhp-350 Nm) and Mahindra XUV500 (155 Bhp-360 Nm), but higher than that of the Hyundai Creta (126 Bhp-260 Nm). A six speed manual gearbox drives the front wheels of the Harrier, and Tata Motors has no plans to offer an all wheel drive variant of the SUV.
![Here’s India’s first Tata Harrier ‘real owner’s review’ of the SUV [Video]](https://www.cartoq.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Tata-Harrier-19.jpg)
What you instead get is an off-road mode, which varies torque between the front wheels of the SUV for better traction on slippery surfaces. While the off-road mode is obviously not as effective as a four wheel drive system or even an all wheel drive mode, it’s better than just having a front wheel drive mode. Apart from this mode, the Harrier gets multiple driving modes such as road and rain modes.
The Harrier will receive an automatic gearbox by this year’s festive season. Testing of the Harrier with the automatic gearbox is already on. The gearbox in question is a 6 speed unit sourced from Hyundai. The torque converter 6 speed automatic will bring the Harrier at par with competition, and the lack of an automatic option won’t hurt this SUV for long.
What will take much longer though is a petrol engine option for the Harrier. The Harrier is expected to get a turbocharged petrol engine sometime in 2020, just before the Bharat Stage 6 (BS6) emission norms kick in. Tata Motors is also said to be working on a petrol-hybrid option of the Harrier for launch beyond 2020. For now though, it’s the diesel motor with the manual gearbox that customers can opt for until new variants come in.
