Despite being regarded the utility vehicle specialist of India, Mahindra & Mahindra's performance in the compact SUV space is not so promising. The Mumbai-based automaker has TUV300 and KUV100 under its belt in sub-Rs 10 lakh SUV space while sales volume of both SUVs is nowhere near to that of the leaders in the segment.

The scenario is set to change as Mahindra is working on a yet another compact SUV code-named S201. The SUV is set to enter market in mid 2018 according to Autocar India. The company hopes to dent the sales of Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza and the soon-to-be-launched Tata Nexon with the new SUV.

New Mahindra Thar
New Mahindra Thar (representational image)Mahindra

Cracking the segment would be tough for Mahindra since Vitara Brezza is the most obvious choice of a majority. Mahindra's strategy reportedly is to deliver a model with best-in-class performance to stay in the game.

"The S201 will be powered by state-of-the-art petrol and diesel engines developed in-house, which will give us best-in-class performance," said Rajan Wadhera, EVP, R&D and Global Product Development of M&M on the sidelines of the Frankfurt Motor Show. "I am pretty excited with the 1.2 petrol which will come with turbo-charging and direct injection," he added.

Both petrol and diesel engines of the S201 will belong to the Mahindra's all-new mFalcon engine family. The 1.2-litre, three-cylinder petrol unit that does duty in the Mahindra KUV100 is expected to get direct fuel-injection and a fairly large turbocharger for the S201 which will result in a massive leap in power to around 140hp. In that case, the S201 will have significant advantage over the rivals for being the most powerful model in the segment.

The S201 will also be powered by a 1.5-litre, four-cylinder diesel mill. The mill could develop as much as 125hp which is again significantly higher than Vitara Brezza's 90hp output from diesel mill.

The S201 will be based on SsangYong Tivoli's platform. The production spec will feature a styling in line with Mahindra's DNA both outside and inside.

Source: ACI

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