Building On A Legacy

The local growth of Mahindra is well documented, as are the reasons behind it. By sticking to the simple formula of offering decent cars at reasonable prices, the Indian manufacturer has gained a sizeable following in South Africa.

BROWSING Mahindra’s website, you soon realise there aren’t any bad apples in there. The Bolero is a tough-as-nails workhorse, the KUV 100 NXT is a brilliant little car that retails from a simply unbelievable R137 000 (with ABS and airbags) and the Pik Up offers a lot of bakkie at R300 000 less than its direct rivals. And that’s before we even get to some of the upcoming products we recently saw up close.

The current star of the show is the XUV 300. Mahindra has high hopes for this car. It is aiming for a Car of the Year and, if it does happen, Mahindra will be the first Indian manufacturer to receive this accolade.

We’re not members of the organisation in charge of selecting the car of the year, but we do believe the XUV 300 is a worthy contender.

Regular readers will know we recently drove an XUV 300 all the way to Putsonderwater, but this time, we decided to see how it fares in a more run-of-the mill setting. In other words, is it as good at taking the kids to school and driving to work as it is on a 2 000km adventure?

GET IN, KIDS

We can confirm that the XUV 300 has enough space for one child in a booster seat, a toddler in a full-size child seat, one mother-in-law and two adults in the front. All with enough head and shoulder room, with no awkward seating positions needed to make everyone fit.

Since XUV 300s will inevitably be used for family duty, it’s not unreasonable to expect a decent helping of safety kit. Mahindra came to the party in a big way as the W8 model featured seven airbags, ABS, ESP, hill hold assist and seatbelt reminders on all seats.

As a daily family runabout, it scores top marks.

THE GADGETS

Since the XUV 300 is wrestling in the highly competitive compact crossover segment, a certain level of luxury is expected.