Tried and Tested are two words that are quite appropriate for describing the diesel engines that power the Mahindra vehicles. However, it seems that Mahindra realizes that it definitely needs to come up with a petrol engine to make the most out of the sales-potential that entry level segments hold.
It has emerged that Mahindra, with some assistance from Korean SUV make Ssangyong, is busy with the development of two new small petrol engines. While one of these engines would be a three cylimder unit, the other would be a four pot petrol unit.
These engines are being developed from the scratch. This means that the engines won’t be related to any of the older Mahindra petrol engines and this is only a good thing, specially if you consider that the earlier petrol motors were derived from diesel engines and were rather obsolete when compared to petrol mills from Japanese auto makers.
Speaking about this, Dr Pawan Goenka, Executive Director M&M, said, “We are currently working on two engines, a three and a four cylinder, coming out of the same platform. These would be mainstream engines for our petrol driven UV range and would power vehicles much smaller than what we have today. Our earlier petrol engines had some compromises because they were based on a diesel engine but our new petrol engines will be an independent, grounds up development and therefore it will be as good as any other petrol engine in the market at that time.”
We believe that the low capacity three pot motor has good chances of finding a home under the hood of the upcoming Mahindra compact SUV. The upcoming Mahindra compact SUV has been codenamed as the S101 and will rival the Ford EcoSport and the likes.
Stay tuned to Motoroids for more updates on the upcoming Mahindra S101 compact SUV
Via: Autocar India