Mahindra sparks price war with TUV300 at Rs 6.9 lakh

The sub-4 metre compact SUV will come in three variants

Home-grown utility vehicle specialist Mahindra & Mahindra on Thursday launched the TUV3OO sports utility vehicle at an introductory price of Rs 6.9 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). The top-end variant will cost Rs 8.4 lakh.

This is the first all-new model launch by the company after a gap of 12 months. The new generation Scorpio was introduced last September. Based on a platform, the TUV3OO is priced much lower than its rivals (see table). M&M which will produce this new SUV at Chakan has set aside a capacity of 5,000 per month.

Pawan Goenka, executive director, said, “The market size of SUVs is at 47,000 units per month and if we are able to sell 4,000-5,000 (of the TUV3OO) per month we will be able to gain a market share of eight per cent to 10 per cent.”

M&M needs new products to help break the weak sales trend it has been witnessing for the past several quarters. Last year, M&M utility vehicles recorded a fall of six per cent to 206,837 units against a growth of five per cent recorded by the industry, according to data supplied by the Siam.

The company spent Rs 1,200 crore on developing this new product including changes made to the plant. Another Rs 300 crore were pumped in by its suppliers

A big draw for the TUV3OO will be the automated manual transmission (AMT) which is not offered by any of its rivals.

For now, the TUV3OO has been launched with diesel engine. However, the company clarified that a petrol engine cannot be ruled out. It will debut in the petrol market later this year with the launch of the S101 SUV.  M&M has designed and developed the TUV3OO in-house with inputs from Italian design powerhouse Pininfarina. The company is separately pursuing buying-out Pininfarina, negotiations for which is under progress, as per media reports.