New Mahindra Scorpio N Review - Road & gravel test, full interior tour, fuel economy, price & backup

Hello and welcome to the inside of the brand new Mahindra Scorpio N .

My name is Chira Deena .

This is the Kaza Coz youtube channel and I'm about to tell you many things about this car .

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Let's start with the basics here .

What is this ?

Well , it is another entrant into the Bucky based S U V market which is a segment currently ruled well , ruled forever by the Toyota for Tuna .

Although we do have the new Everest that's come along , although that has gone up in price big time and then you've got other cars like the Mitsubishi Piero Sport for instance .

And the Isuzu M U X .

So this is Mahindra entrance into this Bucky based segment .

So let me put this car in context for you .

Interestingly , it's taller and wider than a Toyota for tuna and it's only 13 centimeters shorter .

It's a proper seven seater .

So this is actually quite a large car .

It's about the same size as any other adventure S U V that's on the market or maybe not Everest that's grown quite a lot .

But the key car in that segment is the for Tuna .

That's the car that everything gets compared to .

So let's just compare it to that .

Something I want to get across right up front is how affordable the Scorpio is the bottom of the range .

It's a four by two auto that comes in at 460,000 rand , which I'm not kidding is 200,000 rand cheaper than the cheapest auto four by two for Tuna , 200,000 rand .

So you could buy a Scorpio and uh Hyundai Atos , you know , just have a spare Atos lying around if you want it for the same money .

But I am driving the top spec Z L eight .

This is the one with all the bells and whistles .

It's got full low range .

It's full four by four .

This one comes in at 590,000 , but still that is 90,000 rand cheaper than a four by four .

Sorry , a four by two for Tuna auto with a 2.4 liter engine .

Now , when we were deciding to test this car , we thought should we take it out ?

Four by four .

And the reality here is that Mahindra is chasing the lifestyle market .

Mahindra was known for more sort of agricultural robust vehicles , but with this car and the touch screen and all the rest of it , they are going after the lifestyle market and I don't think many lifestyle four by four owners do very much hard core driving , hard core four by four .

What they is this gravel roads on the way to the holiday destination .

So we thought we'd bring it out to a gravel road out here and give it a test .

Now , I've been up and down here , we shot some stuff for the cameras earlier and I was really impressed with how this car held up .

Obviously , you've got those nice big high side wall tires that's really important for comfort on gravel road , but no rattles or squeaks .

The build quality is impressive throughout and it's just handling this horribly rutted road .

Really ?

Really ?

Well , it feels like I'm in control .

Yeah .

No real complaints here .

I think if you have to do long distances on gravel roads , I think you'll be as comfortable in this as you would be in a fortuna and we're back on time and this allows me to highlight something that is quite impressive about the Mahendra .

Yes .

It's a little bit roly poly does sort of , you know , lean on its door handles a bit in the corner , very soft four by four bias suspension .

But what you do get on Tar Road is a very smooth and high quality ride .

I'm actually really impressed by this .

To be honest , it does have some clever trickery in the dampers , something about frequency dependent damping , which I must be completely honest with you .

I don't understand .

I've never heard of it before , but it is a first in segment for this car .

And something else about the ride on the road , which I really like is it has over assisted steering .

The power steering is completely over assisted , but that means that you get this very , very light , very effortless driving feel when you're cruising around town .

And the thing is usually if steering is over assisted , then when you're on the highway , you tend to have to put in lots of small adjustments to keep the car on the straight and narrow .

And that's not the case with this car .

The steering is very direct , it's not vague .

So that's really impressive .

That's mission accomplished .

I think for the drive train engineers underneath the Bonnet 2.2 liter turbocharged four cylinder petrol diesel with very decent power and torque 129 kilowatts and 400 Newton meters .

That Newton meter figure is exactly the same as what you get in the 2.4 engine in the Toyota for Tuna .

But it's about 20% more power over the Toyota for Tuna and that you can really feel your power runs to all four wheels through a six speed auto .

It's a good old fashioned slush box , but there's absolutely nothing wrong with it .

For me .

The mark of a good gearbox is one that you don't even know it's there .

And that's pretty much the experience that I've had with this new Scorpio .

Hm .

Around town , I've been enjoying it out here on the open road out here in the farmlands .

It's performing well as well .

The last Scorpio , in my opinion , felt a little bit underpowered , but this one , they've sorted that out and I don't think you'll be wanting for power .

Look , if you really want your 150 kilowatts , then you got to get the 2.8 from the Toyota for Tuna .

But compared to the 2.4 , this is a better engine .

Now , keep in mind that this , the top spec Z eight L Scorpio N is nearly 90,000 rand cheaper than the lowest spec Toyota for Tuna , the 2.4 .

And then it really starts to look like good value because there's quite a bit of kit in here as standard that you won't find in the fortuna .

So for instance , in the Fortuna , you don't get a front camera in here .

You do , you don't get automatic wipers or lights in the for Tuna in here .

You do as well , and there's things like terrain response , which is quite fancy .

It's sort of land rover .

You operate that down here and generally speaking , it's just a , well spec , well put together cabin , you've got a 3d immersive sound system from Sony touchscreen entertainment with Android Auto and Apple car play two USB ports down here .

A wireless phone charger .

Again .

Another thing you won't get in the for tuna , you've got a cool glove box , which is pretty cool .

That's a nice thing for when you're adventuring in front of the driver , two dials with a nice big digital section in the middle , multi function steering wheel .

Unfortunately , the steering wheel only adjusts for rake and not for reach , which is maybe a bit of an oversight .

Start stop button over here on my right .

You've got keyless entry as well .

Electric mirrors , electric windows all round , a nice bottle pocket down here in the door , one drinks holder over here .

And then I know South Africans love these .

I've never been a huge fan , but you do have your sun roof , automatic climate control , dual zone .

You won't find that in the for tuna as well .

This switch gear is really nicely designed and made of a nice material as well .

He'll descent control .

That's where you turn off your auto stop start , which is important and that's where you activate your cameras .

I'm really quite a big fan of the seats .

They're very supportive .

They are a little bit bucket like as well .

But they do feel like the sort of seats that you could do pretty long distances in as well .

I've enjoyed them just commuting around the city .

Usually I'm not a fan of brown leather , but this tone of brown and in this sort of car , it , it actually works .

And if you want to see all of this information really quickly , really easily use the compare tool in our completely free app .

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You can add up to four cars at a time and you can compare everything down to how long the car is to how long the service plan is .

And that brings me neatly on , on to this car service plan versus the Toyota for Tuna .

So you've got five years , 150,000 kilometer warranty in here versus the three year 100,000 in the fortuna .

Although the service plans are quite similar , five year and nine services in the Toyota , five year , 100,000 kilometers in the Madra .

So that warranty is definitely quite good value on top of the Toyota , right ?

The back seats .

Let's start off with this thing which is a lap belt for the center passenger .

I know you guys don't like this .

It really should be a three pointer .

It's a bit unfortunate that , but other than that , I am fairly impressed with the back bench , um , knee room .

Not amazing .

That's my driving position .

I'm five ft nine .

I , I like to think I'm so , but I'm not , I do sort of recline a bit though with my seats .

You probably get a little bit more with your average driver , but it's not that much worse or better than you will get in something like a for tuna .

What I am quite impressed with though is head room and I don't know if you saw our Fort Everest review , but these Bucky based U V s , they tend to have this problem in the back where there isn't a enough head room just because of how the , the chassis is designed .

But here I'm pretty good in the Everest .

I was actually hitting my head on the roof .

So that's pretty impressive , decent spec back here with one USB port .

Although it's a type c weirdly enough and you've got type A's in the front .

You do have your own air con control back here .

That is quite nifty and the seats fold in a 60 40 split .

But yeah , I could see adults and kids doing long distance in here .

No problem .

The boot door is actually a door and not a tailgate .

And that's not my favorite solution to get into the back of the car because imagine someone's parked close behind you or you've reversed up to a wall or something like that .

This just needs a lot more space to open than a vert opening tailgate .

And then we get to the boot itself and this is where things start to get .

Well , it's not as well thought out .

I think as you would hope so .

With your third row of seats in place , there's obviously almost no boot , this tumbles quite easily .

Just two straps and it's sprung loaded and it folds up into place .

Now , you have quite a decent size boots .

I'll give it that and I'll quickly show you with the cooler box .

Ah , the director obviously got the heaviest cooler box he could find .

So , I mean , that's pretty decent space , right .

But here are some big issues .

That thing is not removable unless you get some serious spanners and you actually unbolt the thing from the chassis of the car .

You do tie it up using this little strap over here .

And then for me , the biggest problem , there's no parcel shelf .

So there's just nowhere secure or safe or out of sight to leave anything .

And this happens often with seven seats of cars , I see it all the time with seven seats of cars , there's no parcel shelf and I really think the manufacturers need to come up with a solution for that .

Now , I'm sure you're interested in fuel consumption .

Of course , you are .

And at the moment , indicated consumption is 11.1 liters to the 100 .

Now , that's not amazing .

It's not bad though .

And I think it will get better on the open road .

Almost certainly drop below 10 .

And again , that's pretty much in line with what I have experienced in the Toyota for Tuna .

So nothing too much out of line there with the competition .

So , should you buy a Mahendra Scorpio in ?

Well , to be honest , I can't see why you shouldn't if you're looking for an adventure S U V with full four by four low range as well .

Seven seats at this price under 600 rand for the top spec 460 for the entry level four by two .

I mean , look at the markets , top spec for Tuna , nearly a million rand Everest over a million rand M U X 900,000 RAND .

I mean , that's , that's what you're spending if you want all of these bells and whistles in one of the other brands .

And the thing is Mahendra , maybe you don't have experience of them , but the company is 70 years old , eight years old .

Actually , they've been in South Africa 18 years and they have 74 dealerships in South Africa .

It's quite a big company now .

So I think your backup will be ok on this .

The warranty is really good and the thing is it's not just a good car at the price , it's a good car and it comes in at a good price .

I think there's a big difference there .

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