Update - IAB reader Mr. Mohamed Shahid has passed on some spyshots of the Mahindra S101 testing near Chennai city. The vehicle should touch down in the marketplace in the second half of the year.
April 15, 2015
The S101 would take Mahindra into the nucleus of the Indian car market.
The upcoming Mahindra S101 has been spied yet again. The test mule was spotted by a reader of TheautomotiveIndia running on the outskirts of Chennai. It will be launched later this year.
The S101 will be positioned to rival premium hatchbacks like the Maruti Swift and the Hyundai Elite i20. Mahindra has developed an all-new monocoque chassis for the S101 and the mini-SUV will also feature a new range of 1.2-liter three-cylinder petrol and diesel engines developed in-house. This will be the first product under the Mahindra banner that gets a petrol engine for India.
The 1.2-liter engines are built on the same block as the 1.6-liter engines and they will drop a cylinder, allowing the company to cash in on the common parts. Besides being the company's second monocoque vehicle, it would also be its second FWD vehicle.
Going by spyshots so far, the S101 is also set to feature bench seats at the front, thereby offering a 3+3 seating arrangement. This also means that the S101 will get a dashboard-mounted gear lever, like in the Datsun Go with controls placed longitudinally. Reports are also in stating a potential automated manual gearbox for the SUV, like in the Maruti Celerio and the Tata Zest.
Directly competing vehicles: Maruti XA Alpha, Tata Nexon, Ford EcoSport, VW Taigun
Expected price range: INR 5-7 lakhs, ex-Showroom
Tentative launch timeframe: Late 2015
