Mahindra Thar 5-Door - All You Need To Know

However, despite all these fantastic qualities, the Mahindra Thar SUV still has a major weakness considering the general mindset of the Indian audience. This is because the Mahindra Thar is offered as a 3-door variant in India. As a result, the SUV could only seat 4 adults and barely fit their luggage.

To overcome this, Mahindra will soon launch the 5-door version of the Thar SUV in India and the model has been spotted a few times testing with heavy camouflage. So, here's everything you need to know.

Platform

The upcoming 5-door variant of the Mahindra Thar will be based on a different platform. While this might be surprising to many, it is true that the upcoming Mahindra Thar 5-door will be based on the recently launched Scorpio-N platform. This information was confirmed by R Velusamy, Mahindra Senior VP & Head of Automotive Product Development.

Given that, it is safe to expect that the upcoming 5-door Mahindra Thar will have almost similar ride & handling characteristics to the newly launched Mahindra Scorpio N SUV. However, it is worth mentioning that the Mahindra Scorpio N platform itself is a heavily modified platform of the Mahindra Thar 3-door.

Safety

Compared to its predecessor, the new Mahindra Thar was indeed leaps and bounds ahead in terms of refinement, build quality, comfort, features, performance and safety. While the outgoing Mahindra Thar 3-door even comes with a 4-star safety rating from Global-NCAP, we expect a 5-Star safety rating from Global-NCAP for the 5-door iteration of the SUV.

This is to be expected as the upcoming 5-door iteration of the upcoming Mahindra Thar will be underpinned by the same platform as the newly launched Mahindra Scorpio N SUV. It is worth mentioning that the Mahindra Scorpio N has not yet received any safety rating from Global NCAP.

However, Mahindra is very confident about the newly launched Scorpio N SUV and even released a teaser regarding its high safety standards.

Comfort & Space

One of the biggest reasons for developing the 5-door iteration of the Mahindra Thar is to offer more space for passengers and their luggage. This target will be comfortably met as the model uses the Scorpio N platform.

Also, this will make the upcoming 5-door version of the Mahindra Thar a lot more comfortable and stable - Thanks to its Penta-link rear suspension from the Scorpio N SUV.

Powertrain

In terms of powertrain, the outgoing iteration of Mahindra Thar is powered by two engine options, both of which are a lot more powerful and refined. The most popular choice is the 2.2-litre diesel engine with 130bhp of peak power and 300Nm of peak torque.

The next engine option is the 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol unit with 150bhp of peak power and 320Nm of peak torque. In addition to that, both engines can be specified with either a 6-speed manual or 6-speed automatic gearbox.

However, we expect more powerful powertrain options to compensate for the additional weight of the upcoming 5-door iteration of the SUV. This means the upcoming new Mahindra Thar 5-door will come with the more powerful iteration of the 2.2-litre turbocharged diesel engine. This powertrain is likely to produce around 150bhp of peak power and 360Nm of peak torque (lower than Scorpio N). This is more likely to avoid competition with Scorpio N.

Off-Road

The Mahindra Thar is an off-road friendly SUV and comes with a shift-on-fly four-wheel-drive system. However, with a longer wheelbase, expect a slight dip in the off-road ability of the upcoming 5-door iteration of the SUV compared to the outgoing model.

Price

We expect the starting price of the upcoming Mahindra Thar 5-door to be close to the Mahindra Scorpio N SUV. However, there is a possibility that the top-end version could be priced a bit higher as the Thar 5-door SUV is more inclined towards the 'lifestyle' segment.

Thoughts About Mahindra Thar 5-Door

The upcoming Mahindra Thar 5-door SUV could easily become one of the best-selling models in Mahindra's history. However, we are not sure how Mahindra will handle the production of the model, given the waiting period for the XUV700 SUV itself extends up to 2 years for some variants.