Pros & cons: Modified Mahindra Thar 4x4 in India

So many memories created…so many more to create…a truly special machine built from the heart.

GTO recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

What I Love

• The style, the charisma, the iconic Jeep design, the brute image. Especially of a Modified 2-Door Soft-Top 4×4 in this shade of red. It’s a fashion statement

• A car in which you will always take the longer way home! Delivers a “kick” and driving satisfaction equivalent to many cars costing 5X more

• Indisputable winner of the “how a car makes you feel” award. Greatly punches above its weight in driving & ownership happiness

• 4-star rating in the GNCAP (Jeep Wrangler got a single star in the Euro NCAP!) & a host of safety aids such as ESP with rollover mitigation, hill hold / descent, TPMS, Isofix mounts etc.

• A 150 BHP Jeep! 0 – 100 acceleration time of ~10 seconds in an offroader. Can out-accelerate cars like the Honda City & Toyota Fortuner ATs. Enjoyable performance & superb low-end torque too

• Turbo-petrol is impressively refined – no noise or vibrations. Will pleasantly surprise you

• Smooth, well-tuned 6-speed Aisin automatic gearbox. Tuned for driveability, not economy. Enthusiasts will appreciate

• 4×4 hardware, offroad capability & 226 mm GC. Ready to have fun in slush, muck, deserts, jungles & the mountains!

• Brilliantly-engineered Convertible top. Open-top in <10 minutes, closed in ~10 minutes. The flexibility of opening & closing on the go is priceless. No water leakages either

• The sheer joy of open-top cruising with cool wind in your hair, rock music playing, the beautiful stars above, moonlight in the cabin and being one with the elements

• Modification & personalization options are limitless! No 2 modified Thars are the same. Terrific after-market support

• Tough, solid build. In typical Mahindra fashion, the Thar can handle lots of abuse. Rough roads or no-roads don’t pose any problem at all

• Compliant ride quality by Jeep standards. Far less bumpiness than the stock car, thanks to the after-market AVO suspension & 30-31 PSI tyre pressure (I drop it for city use only). These 2 points have made the Thar more liveable

• Improved road manners due to the aftermarket suspension (although my Thar is still a poor handler). “Improved” is the key term here. Expressway bobbing & bounciness have noticeably reduced

• The overall quality, fit, finish & paint job are very acceptable by Jeep standards

• I love the dapper interiors! Purposeful, stylish & with the essential features. Lightyears ahead of the 1st-gen Thar

• Enough space for 4 adults. Room at the front is excellent. Rear legroom is healthy, once you bend + climb to get there. The rear seat can recline to a very relaxing angle as well

• Tall, commanding driving position makes you feel like a king! Towers above other cars on the road

• Adjustable lumbar support is swell! Unlike some Thar owners, I’m a fan of the stock seat upholstery. Great looking & offroad-friendly

• Super easy to drive in the city. No one cuts you, other vehicles give way, bad roads aren’t an issue, no worries about dents or scratches, great frontal & lateral visibility, torquey motor, smooth AT

• Am satisfied with the performance of the Maxxis Bravo AT 980 tyres. 15 – 16k price is fair for the 285 mm size. BF Goodrich alternative is double the price

• Chilling air-conditioner! Satisfactory performance, even in the soft-top convertible. No rear AC vents, yet passengers won’t complain

• The reliability of the 2nd-gen Thar has generally been good, going by the ownership reports on Team-BHP (BS6 Diesel DPF issues aside). Most turbo-petrol owners have had a fuss-free ownership experience

• An offroader that I can actually go road-tripping in! It’s a rare 4×4 Jeep which you can drive 300 km non-stop. Try that in the yesteryear Thars, Gypsys & MM550s

• W-I-D-E appeal. Everyone falls in love with it, whether enthusiast / layman, old / young, man / woman, Indian / foreigner, urban dweller / rural farmer, PhD / illiterate and rich / poor. To many, it’s the sole car of the house. To many, it’s the 3rd or 4th car of the house, confidently sharing garage space with luxury cars (like this BHPian’s Thar & Lamborghini)

• All the modifications have greatly enhanced the daily useability, practicality & user-friendliness of my Thar. All the stuff on the outside has made it irresistibly s-e-x-y

• This is the car that pushed Maruti into finally launching the Jimny here. Maruti’s been sitting on the fence for a decade; it is the Thar’s eye-popping success + fat profit margins that woke up the Vasant Kunj boys from their slumber. God bless competition as it makes things better for us customers

• Am receiving excellent after-sales service quality from NBS International (Mahindra-owned sales & service outlets)

What I Hate

• Expensive for a 2-door Jeep. 20-lakhs (4×4 variants) can bring you proper 5 / 7 seaters with way more on-road capability, practicality, family-friendliness and daily useability

• Convertible soft-top offers zero security & flaps heavily above 80 kmph (jugaad solution available)

• Gosh, does the Thar Turbo-Petrol AT guzzle! I see merely 6 kmpl in the city. My enthusiastic driving style & fat 285 mm tyres don’t help either

• Did I mention that she suffers from a drinking habit? Drive hard on the expressway and you’ll see merely 8 kmpl on the open road (on one fast drive, I saw 7)! Probably has the aerodynamics of a brick

• 2-door body is stylish, but impractical. Ingress & egress of the rear seat are impossible for the elderly, saree-clad women & those with bad backs

• Poor handling & dynamics. Although on-road behaviour has improved with my after-market suspension, the overall handling is still awful. Best to drive it conservatively on the expressway. The turbo-petrol motor can propel it to really high speeds, so be careful. Above 100 kmph, the rest of the car cannot keep up with the powerful engine

• Road dips & big undulations taken at highway speeds can dangerously unsettle the car. Very scary

• Tempo-like turning radius has only gotten worse with the fatter tyres. 3-point turns are a frequent affair…even where you least expect them!

• Horrible steering feel. It’s akin to moving a stick through wet clay

• If you are a family man, the Thar cannot be your primary car. It is best as the 2nd or 3rd car of the house

• Puny glovebox cannot even hold my sunglass case!! Mahindra took the “glove” part too seriously (all it can hold are gloves). This is disappointing as the glovebox is the only lockable storage area in this open Jeep

• Short urban tank range. In the city, you’ll need to fill up petrol every 300 km or so. Turbo-petrol’s tank range can be a liability when offroading, compared to the diesel variant

• Laughably pathetic boot space. Worse still, Mahindra hasn’t given the Thar a full-folding rear seat (I’ve added the same through the aftermarket)

• A 4-seater, not 5. Rear seat is good only for two. Legally too, it’s classified as a 4-seater

• Appalling noise insulation. Soft-top lets any & all exterior sounds in. I can hear bikers conversing…or more likely, they can hear the lyrics of my songs!

• Excessive feedback from the steering – onroad and offroad. Every bump, stone & unevenness on the road is transmitted back to your hands via the steering. On bad roads, the steering is constantly moving, dancing & shaking!

• Phone call volume on Bluetooth is too low when driving, due to the soft-top letting all the outside noises in. Most times, I have to pull over & park to complete a telephone conversation. So much for in-car telephony!

• Front seat seriously lacks under-thigh support for tall drivers. You better be fit for those long highway drives

• Long list of missing features for the 20-lakh pricetag (dead pedal, reversing cam, auto-dimming IRVM, auto headlamps & wipers, struts for the h-e-a-v-y bonnet, electrically-folding ORVMs…)

• Mahindra’s sly & silent feature deletions leave a bad taste in the mouth – related thread. Unpardonable to indulge in such practices for what is a premium-priced product. Locking rear diff has now been deleted from the Thar Petrol (can be added back at dealer level for extra $$$)

• The extremely irritating engine idling start / stop system. My tuner hasn’t been able to disable it through the software (although he did it for my 530d). Have to remember to press the disable button each time I start the Jeep

• 1,715 kilo kerb weight is too heavy for a 2-door sub-4 meter Jeep. Fat weight brings its own penalties, on the road as well as off it

• My smaller 1,245-kilo 1997 Classic feels way more agile, light & chuckable when offroading. It can squeeze into gaps the wide Thar cannot. The Classic has a pure mechanical feel that’s missing in the Thar. Also, when offroading, I prefer the Classic’s MT gearbox to the Thar’s AT

• Too easy to steal. You have to park safely & use anti-theft devices. What’s worse, the Thar doesn’t really get a security system

• The AC compressor cuts off when you shove the accelerator pedal all the way in. This is extremely annoying if you are driving hard on a hot summer day. Either go fast or stay cool?! Reminds me of Marutis which needed this due to puny 796cc engines – Mahindra didn’t have to do this in a 150 BHP Jeep with ample power on tap

• Glaring blind spots toward the rear (including the side-rear) due to the soft-top’s design and spare wheel location

• Petrol Thars suffer poorer resale value than the Diesel Thar, as 80 – 90% of demand is for the latter. Petrol with a Convertible top will be even worse as 80% demand is for the hard-top variant (petrol hard-top is now available in a cheaper 4×2 version as well)

• The keyhole on the fuel lid sticks out like a sore thumb on this good-looking car. I understand a lock on the fuel lid is necessary for an open Jeep, but Mahindra should have fitted the lock on the fuel cap instead, like the Wrangler. Would have looked so much cleaner

Stuff I’m lukewarm about

• The ride quality is still extremely busy! Improved due to my after-market suspension & lower tyre PSI levels, but it is still very busy. This doesn’t drive like your typical monocoque crossover at all. Owners of the 2023 Thar are commenting that ride quality is more compliant than in earlier builds, so drive your Thar for 5,000 km, then decide if you want to spend big bucks on after-market suspensions

• Soft-top convertible isn’t that bad to live with. AC is still very powerful. Haven’t faced any leakages. No one has attempted to break in. Period. Flapping can be significantly reduced with jugaad. The hard-top might be 100% more practical, but the Convertible is 1,000% more fun. The Thar is anyway a heart-over-head purchase, so might as well get the Convertible & have a blast!

• Diesel-like max revs of the turbo-petrol. ~4,800 rpm in AT kickdown mode and just 5,500 rpm in manual mode. I wish it went to 6,000 – 6500 rpm

• The stock audio system has decent sound quality for an open Jeep. I don’t mind it even as a guy who lives on music, although it’s not what you would call impressive at all. The only modification I have pending is a speaker + subwoofer + amplifier upgrade. Intentionally spacing it out so as to spice things up later

• The 6-speed AT’s kickdown response time can be slow when driving hard on 2-lane highways. Better to use “manual” mode for a downshift, to prepare the car before your overtaking move

• The hydraulic power steering has gotten a bit firmer due to the fatter tyres. Not heavy, but firmer than stock

• Fair brakes for a Mahindra offroader. I appreciate this. Anyone who has driven the MM550, 1st-gen Thar & early Scorpios will know what I’m talking about

• Mahindra’s Android Auto implementation sucks. 3 years since launch & it still has disconnection issues. Although, I personally prefer Bluetooth due to the louder volume levels & ability to continue using voice typing (disabled in Android Auto)

• 5-year warranty (with extended coverage) is alright, but many other manufacturers are now offering extended warranties up to 6 & 7 years. Mahindra should increase the extended coverage period. A 5-year warranty is so yesterday

• Merely 2 airbags feel paltry in today’s scenario for a 20-lakh car. Side airbags are essential. Most same-price cars come equipped with 6 airbags. In a frontal collision, you have all that crumple zone ahead of you. If you get T-boned by a truck, you don’t have much of a crumple zone and it’s here that side airbags can be lifesavers

• BS6 exhaust & DPF issues aside, you should get the diesel if your running is high. It is very refined, quick enough, way more fuel-efficient & offers 50 – 75% more tank range on highway drives. The diesel is also the preferred choice for offroading = better crawl, locking rear diff (although you can add it to Thar Petrol at dealer level) and longer tank range

• Innumerable panel gaps & inconsistencies, especially on the outside, yet you won’t find any Thar owner complaining about the same. It’s all part of the “brute” Jeep package

• No driving modes are offered. This is one car that could actually use Eco & Power modes because the petrol engine has extremes (quite fast, major drinking habit). Power mode could further come in handy when offroading, as would an “S” mode on the gearbox to hold higher revs & keep the engine on the boil (useful for fast highway drives & offroading alike). Thar turbo-petrol AT owners who drive in an easy manner see 7 kmpl in the city; an ECO mode with lesser horsepower and 8 kmpl would boost the petrol’s reputation

• The head-unit doesn’t remember the last played source (it always restarts in radio mode) or volume selected by the driver. Who uses FM radio in today’s streaming times? Such a usability failure. Another one = if I have chosen “track display” on the ICE screen and someone calls me…even after the call ends, it remains on the phone screen (in other cars, the screen goes back to displaying song info)

• Like the Wrangler, Mahindra should have given a removable hard-top for the Thar. Now, that would really give Thar owners the best of both worlds – practicality and security, along with the joys of open-top cruising. I hear from reliable sources that it’s being considered for the 4-door Thar

• The surprisingly competent, peppy, fuel-efficient & well-priced Thar 1.5L RWD variant has effectively killed the demand & resale value of 4×4 variants

5 reasons I bought the Thar

• Fun
• Laughter
• Creating unforgettable memories
• Joy
• Style

Happy to say that the Thar has exceeded my expectations on all 5 points

Continue reading GTO’s ownership report on his modified Thar for more insights and information.

Keyword: Pros & cons: Modified Mahindra Thar 4x4 in India