- 5 months ago
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MotorTranscript
00:00Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the one that we've all been waiting for with
00:12bated breath, the one that will rock the boat for every other SUV out there.
00:17Welcome to the world of the Thar Rocks, I mean that name.
00:30All of that is yet to come but first let's turn back time just a little.
00:41In 2020 when the new Thar came out we made a video, a video that dissected if the Thar
00:47could be a car that your family would approve and judging by how many they sold there the
00:53answer was mostly a yes. But for many it was actually still a no, it was not the ideal
01:00single car solution. It was big, it was bulky, it wasn't very comfortable and then there was
01:06the biggest issue, reception. But we think that's all about to change because what Mahindra now
01:18wanted was to attack that market of people who wanted something that looked like a Thar with that
01:25Jeep historical Mahindra licensed DNA but still was good enough to be their only car.
01:32Well at first glance they seem to have done it because it's got four doors, five if you count the
01:39rear tailgate and that means you don't have to put your friends and family in the back without
01:46some Olympic level gymnastics. As you saw getting out and getting in are two rather easy things and the
01:56first thing that really hits you when you do get in is the fact that the interiors are beige or almost
02:00white, very, very light cream and yes, I know if you have an off-road oriented car that is a big no-no
02:06and that's correct, I don't know why Mahindra have done this but actually I do know because most people
02:10who have a Thar are never ever going to take it off-road, they're going to drive it on-road, they want
02:16a more premium audience, more premium audience likes lighter interiors, there you go, that's her answer.
02:20Now, you can sit upright like that, there is a lot of space or you can choose to recline and then you
02:26have even more space up front and you literally have miles and miles of headroom because look,
02:32look literally stretching my hand completely, lots of space, I literally feel like I'm in my
02:36cell because the sky is literally my roof, the panoramic sunroof literally extends all the way
02:42back here, it's crazy. We mentioned right in the beginning, this will not be a seven-seater,
02:46it'll be a five-seater car, we were of course right, like we've been right with many other little leaks
02:51and things with the Mahindra Thar five-door but you've got a ton of space in the back there to store
02:57your stuff, 447 litres when you sort of store till the height of the seat here and almost 650 litres
03:03if you store even more, that makes the booth even at sort of normal storage more than the creta,
03:09which means all you bros out there who say,
03:12bro, go on, go on long drive or the hills are calling bro, let's head to the hills or wanderlust,
03:21yeah, you know who you are, you know who you are, this is the perfect car for all of you guys.
03:26Now, if there was ever a case study as to a manufacturer actually listening and hearing
03:40to what the customer wants and actually making those changes and improving a product when they
03:44launch an update or a new product like this is, it has got to be Mahindra. One of the biggest
03:50feedbacks for the 3.8R was without a doubt, the bounciness of the ride, the ride quality in general,
03:56especially for rear passengers, it was horrific for people sitting in the back which is why whenever
04:00I went out in Athar for a longer trip, I always ensured that I had nobody sitting at the back.
04:05Now, yeah, fine, it could take really bad roads well because it could take a thrashing really,
04:10really well but overall, ride quality was questionable at best. In this, it has improved.
04:15There are two reasons, first, it is a longer wheelbase which means just generally bump absorption is
04:20better. Second, the chassis underneath is now a massive update to what the Thar had. So, imagine
04:27this, if the Thar was say, generation 3 chassis from Mahindra, the Scorpio was a 3.5, this is an
04:33update on the 3.5. Now, they're calling it 4 but it's still a similar chassis from what the Scorpio is
04:38but it's actually better because it's got bigger wheels and tyres and it has more rigidity as compared
04:44to what the Scorpio is as well and it is lighter. Now, all of that will of course make a difference
04:51to how this rides and don't get me wrong, it's still not going to be as comfortable as your monocoque
04:56standard family compact SUV like say a Hyundai Creta but overall, this is a huge improvement compared
05:03to what the 3-door Thar is. Everybody in terms of the test engineers that actually tune this car
05:09say that it drives better than a Scorpio, I'm not too sure to be honest, I still think the Scorpio has
05:15a little bit better suspension setup as compared to what this is because I think this is still
05:20slightly soft, it should have still been just maybe a slightly better damped car overall. The other big
05:26complaint on the 3-door Thar was the NVH level, all that wind noise on the windscreen, all the wind noise
05:33on the side mirrors, much, much lower as compared to what the 3-door version is. Definitely some changes
05:40that have been done to the body, little aero bits here and there have made a difference.
05:45Now, what we are driving is the diesel automatic four-wheel drive, it's the fully loaded,
05:49all the bells and whistles version of the Thar rocks and god, I still can't get over the name but honestly,
05:56this thing is the one you really, really want if you're going to do long distances. Firstly, diesel torque,
06:01lovely, I love it and yes, I know in NCR, diesel cars after 10 years are pretty much useless and
06:07there's always a worry that that rule might apply to the rest of the country but in terms of an
06:12actual package, this is still the best.
06:20A diesel engine, the 2.2 CRD, it's been around for a long time, it's been honed and developed and bettered
06:26and made more powerful and talkier and smoother and quieter every single year, year on year and that's
06:32what Mahindra's core strength is, that diesel engineering and all of that has amalgamated into
06:39this car. I'm actually glad I'm driving the automatic because that's the one that you really should be
06:43buying for a car this large, a manual, yeah, fine for the enthusiast in you could be interesting but I
06:49would really have an automatic today especially with a big diesel engine because this tried and
06:54tested ASIN 6-speed just like it does in the 3-door is just or just feels so damn bulletproof,
07:01it shifts decently, quickly, it's not as quick as say a DSG but it is still quick enough and more
07:07importantly, it just feels undestructible, bulletproof like the rest of the car almost does.
07:13You know, there is so much modernity in the Thar, there is the updates in the dashboard,
07:20the updates on the screen, the updates everywhere but the one thing that they've stayed true to
07:27is that four-wheel drive lever because that mechanical lever down there,
07:31when you do shift into four-wheel drive high or four-wheel drive low, that clunk you get,
07:37that's the kind of stuff men get excited about, that's the kind of stuff I,
07:41as a petrol head get excited about. I hope the Thar never gets a rotary knob
07:46to shift into four-wheel drive, I hope that never happens because a car like this needs that
07:50mechanical clunk to engage four-wheel drive.
07:56Now, I know you probably want to see how capable the Thar is off-road but sadly though, you are gonna
08:03have to wait just a little bit more for that because I don't want to do some half-baked Lallu course
08:09that's designed for this car to go through without even putting a foot wrong. I want to take it to
08:15the extreme, I want to take it to the max, I want to do things with the Thar rocks that people who drive
08:21the Thar rocks and love going off-road are going to do. So, there will be another video coming your
08:27way soon, trust me, it's gonna be worth the wait.
08:30For now though, let's talk about the other thing a lot of people asked for, like this, although you do
08:42have to keep your button pressed and then of course this and that but that's exactly what 99% of all the
08:51Thar buying people want, they want more luxury, they want more premium-ness. With this car, people asked
08:57for more comfort, check, people asked for more luxury, check, people asked for more features, check,
09:03I asked for cool seats, big check and yet you get a lot more of everything, you get more power,
09:09a lot more space and it still has the essence of a Thar.
09:17It is tall, it is brutish, it has massive 19-inch wheels which in some states will be immediately
09:24replaced by 22s and in some states will be replaced by 16s with some nice chunky tyres.
09:31And that is the beauty of it, just like the 3D, this is going to be a blank canvas for people to
09:37paint on. Now, I know people aren't going to like a certain few things, like this triangular window,
09:41for example, big big negative but look, the design language, the inspiration is from the CJ5,
09:46where you have a little angular crossbar, angular roll cage. Now, this a lot of people don't like
09:51either, not a big fan of to be honest and this I'm definitely not a fan of, I would remove these badges,
09:58the first thing I do if I actually buy one. And then of course, you have the grille, now it's called
10:02the six-pack grille because it's got six slots instead of seven so that one doesn't get into any legal
10:06trouble. But look, 99% of you are going to put an aftermarket grille on that, in any case,
10:11and that's what I'm talking about, a blank canvas.
10:23So, coming back to the original question, perfect single car for the petrol head in you and your
10:29non-petrol head family.
10:34My wife, I'm glad she doesn't watch my videos so I can make more that noise reference to words
10:39her, she doesn't like cars, she doesn't care for them but even she likes a big bulky SUV for the same
10:45reason most other people do. It offers this perception, this sense of safety and honestly,
10:51this car, the Thar Rocks, offers more than just the perception of safety because six airbags, you've got
10:57ADAS and I'm guessing it will be a five-star rated car when they actually do a crash test on it very,
11:02very soon for the Bharat NCAP. It sort of writes the script to be the perfect
11:08single-car garage, the all-you-need car, the family car which brings me to a conclusion that I have
11:16sort of dreaded. Yeah, hello, is this the bank? Yeah, can I get a loan on a brand new car please?
11:25Yeah, oh, it's the five-door Thar.
11:40Okay, since you guys love the unscripted stuff a lot, I'm going to do it in this video as well,
11:44in fact, we're going to do it, we're going to try and do it in as many videos as possible,
11:47especially when we're doing first drives because sometimes you just can't compress everything.
11:50Anyways, couple of things, right, although there's a lot of space in the back, although the seats are
11:55great, all of that is fine, there are a couple of really, really stupid things that they've actually
11:59missed out on. For example, the storage in the doors is just negligible, like you can't put a one
12:04litre bottle in there, it's impossible and there's absolutely no storage in the rear door space, like
12:10it's very, very, very, very small, you can't put nothing. Similar to this, I mean, this cup holder
12:16is too small and although you can put your phone here, I mean, there's not like a lot of actual
12:21storage space in general, there is a little bit of storage space here, but again, this is very,
12:25very small. For a car this large, there should have been more small cubby holes in general storage,
12:30which is absent and then you come to the glove box. I'm going to have the camera go a little bit behind,
12:35because, look at this, you have to long press it for it to open, there's no like,
12:44press and grab handle of any sort, which is just confusing, I don't know why that is,
12:49it is a cool glove box though. But apart from that, I mean, I haven't really found any other
12:53obvious problems or obvious things that are a fault. Oh yeah, our brake pedal came off,
13:00or the sort of trim on the brake pedal came off, so that's a negative. Oh, I did forget,
13:05the one big negative. Now, when this video actually ends, you'll see more content coming
13:09from us on social media and another video on YouTube, where we're actually going to drive
13:14the car back from where we are right now in Kochi, back to our offices in Pune and I'm going to take
13:18it back to Mumbai and give you a little surprise ending wait for that video and there's no Apple CarPlay,
13:23which means there's no maps and I'm not familiar with these roads at all, which is annoying,
13:26because now I have to go and get a little phone mount for the windscreen or something,
13:30for my maps to work and for me to sort of see the maps, which is really, really frustrating to me.
13:36This will actually kick in or the Apple CarPlay will kick in when deliveries start, there's some
13:40licensing issue, but the fact that it's not there on the test car, we just have to say it, it's as
13:44simple as that. Oh yeah, and when you do open the panoramic roof, you have to keep the button
13:49pressed, as I mentioned, which is, that's coding, so yeah, I don't know why that is. Apart from that,
13:57the sunroof is, makes a little bit of a squeak, which you might put some Vaseline on, well you
14:05did find another use for Vaseline in a car or WD-40, at least, to keep this pressed as well for some
14:13strange reason. But yeah, there you go, that's the unscripted part, there are some negatives of the
14:18car. I do like the little small bits and pieces of easter eggs that the car has all over the place,
14:25which you should go and find if you see a car near you, so there are some on the windscreen in the
14:28front, windscreen in the back and the two rear quarter glasses in the back also have them and
14:32there are a few on the tyres as well. But apart from that, that's the Thar in its entirety,
14:36unscripted and unscripted parts, tell us how you like these bits, we want to do them more.
14:40And we'll, of course, see you in the comment section below. Thank you guys for watching.
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