Mahindra will be entering the compact SUV segment with the S101. The Ford Ecosport rivalling compact SUV has been spied testing in Chennai.
The upcoming compact SUV from the leading Indian utility vehicle maker could go on sale at a very competitive price point and is expected to make its debut around 2014-end or early 2015. The Mahindra S101 is smaller in size than the Quanto and hence will be a strict five seater. Also, we won’t be too surprised if Mahindra offers the S101 with an Automatic transmission for the diesel engine variant.
It is being said that the S101 will come with two new, highly modern, small capacity petrol engines from Mahindra. These engines are currently being developed with assistance from Ssangyong. While one of these engines is a three pot mil, the other is a four pot petrol motor. These new petrol engines will be developed from scratch and won’t be based on any of the old Mahindra petrol motors. The earlier petrol engines from Mahindra had some compromises because they were based on a diesel engine. Since these engines are all new, we can expect other small Mahindra vehicles also to be powered by them.
It is being speculated the S101 might be called as the Mahindra XUV300 and will be positioned as a smaller version of the high selling Mahindra XUV500. The XUV300 will share a lot of features from the XUV 500 and might even feature plenty of design cues borrowed from the bigger sibling.
Stay tuned to Motoroids for more updates on the upcoming Mahindra S101 compact SUV
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