One thing that I have found driving Thar on the highways is that the best fuel economy is achieved at around 80kmph.
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It’s been ten months since I got my hands on my Mountain Back Gorilla (Thar LX P AT HT) and have clocked 10,000 kms and some on it including a Mumbai-Kerala round trip. I thought it would be nice to share some ownership experiences here.
The most important thing that differentiates the Thar from other cars is its sheer road presence. It’s an odd (in a cool way) beast to look at and drive around. The car feels very powerful and overtakes at low to medium speeds come easily. The engine is refined and doesn’t make much noise, even when pushed.
The Jimny (A side note)
The new kid in the block, Suzuki Jimny, is well-proportioned and looks pleasing. I even went to the showroom to check it out. I was surprised to see Jimny to be pretty small in person. However, it did strike me as being far more practical than the Thar. But will I swap Thar for Jimny? Probably not! It may be as capable but it’s too small for an off-roader in my opinion. Overall fit and finish inside the cabin also do not inspire much in the Jimny. I hear Jimny has much better ride quality than the Thar. If that is the case, Suzuki has pulled a good job, especially because Jimny gets a rigid axle setup at the front as well. Practicality and good ride quality would attract many takers but not me.
Coming back to the Thar
Good things aside, I have learnt that not all things are Rosy and sunshine with the Thar though. I find a stark reduction in ride quality in comparison to my good ol’ XUV 500. XUV used to protest with oodles of suspension noise when pushed into potholes but if the music was loud enough you could easily ignore the noise and let the vehicle glide over the broken patches. With the Thar, not as much suspension noise as in the XUV, but the ride is a lot bumpier in comparison and slowing down is the only way to save your spine.
However, one peculiar thing that I have noticed is the way the Thar goes over deep potholes on the road. When the speed is low enough the ride over deep potholes, the ones that would have bottomed my XUV 500, is a lot more composed and reassuring. More composed would be an understatement; at low speeds, the Thar eats those potholes for breakfast. Probably this has to do, with keeping the extra ground clearance aside, with the increased wheel articulation and the chunky A/T tyres. Of course, if you go fast over these bad patches of road, nothing would happen to the Thar, it is your back and your bottom that would take the beating. On our ‘Indian Quality’ Concrete Highways the ride quality is not terrible but low frequency (many a times large amplitude) vibrations creep in at all speeds and there is no escaping that. Then again, if there is some 50 to 60kg of load on the rear seats, the ride becomes much more pliant.
The high centre of gravity of the vehicle and the off-road-oriented suspension setup keeps the ESP system busy. The system gets activated whenever I hit a set of continuous undulations on a stretch of road near where I live. These undulations are only on one side of one of the lanes. I have driven in my XUV 500 W4 many times in the past over this known stretch. That car, which did not have ESP (W4 Variant), would get pulled to the side of the undulations. In the Thar however, the ESP would cut in and stabilise the car and more or less maintains it in a straight line. You can hear the ESP when it’s doing its job. I saw the ESP cutting in when I was in a hurry around a swooping Flyover-‘U’-turn. The ESP announces that it’s alive and kicking now and then with a grinding noise from under the bonnet near the driver’s side, though I have failed to notice the ESP lamp on the dash as the manual says.
The Automatic Box has some special characteristics that one has to look out for. One time I was trying to overtake on a multilane highway in the city and had to press the gas pedal hard. This kicked the gear down, but that very moment the situation forced me to drop the manoeuvre and I took my foot off the pedal. To my complete surprise, the car did not slow down instead kept accelerating ahead as if I had kept my accelerator pressed. Though this anomalous behaviour was only for a brief moment and has only happened once, the experience was disconcerting. If I had encountered this demon while overtaking on an undivided road on some twisty-windy road with another vehicle hurdling towards me from the other side, the outcome would have been a lot different. What I have noticed is that the Auto Box does lurch slightly every time it goes through a shift, though the effect would remain unnoticed during sane speeds. But at higher engine RPMs and during a forced kick-down manoeuvre, it seems the Auto Box takes over the engine control to reduce shift shock. Whatever it is, it’s worth remembering this behaviour.
Coming to more subtle things, when I took the test drive of the car in early June 2022, one of the things that hit hard me was the speaker situation. The speakers had appalling sound quality in the test drive car. It sounded as if they were playing through a pipe. But in my Aug 2022 Manufactured car, the sound quality is a lot more liveable. I don’t know for sure whether M&M has updated the speakers or it is just me.
Storage in Thar
In a Thar, one has to be pretty resourceful in finding storage space for everyday stuff. I don’t like to drill holes or change things from stock in any car. So that goes for my Thar as well. However, to make the car more practical, some of the ‘no-invasive’ things that I have added are as follows,
1. Driver rear seat organiser from M2ALL. This one’s good. It’s made of canvas-type cloth material and has pockets that can take average size water bottles, a small umbrella, a paper towel box and other whatnots that you would want on a long road trip.
2. There is some limited space below the rear seat towards the middle. I have got some essentials like jumper cables, tools that came with the car, a pair of spare headlight bulbs and similar things in a rectangular zipper bag under there. The bag is buckled to one of the rear seat’s rear anchor points so that the bag does not slip out of its place from under the seat.
3. I did a convoy-style road trip while in Kerala. There were three cars and one of them started acting strange in the middle of nowhere (close to the middle of nowhere since in Kerala no place is to be too far from civilisation). Anyways, that car just seized and stopped with an ABS warning on the dash. Thar is pretty capable of pulling another vehicle, but with what? Though the stopped car did start after some time and didn’t throw any tantrums afterwards, that’s when I decided that I needed a proper tow rope. So, I got one from Amazon with 3 Tonne towing capacity. It’s Indian and came with a test certificate with an actual human signature! Pretty rare these days. This is one of those things that I would carry around in my car (strapped to the rollover bar in the boot) and wouldn’t mind if I don’t get to use it ever. It is only there to ward off evil spirits (pun intended).
4. I have added a boot organiser bag with Velcro at its bottom over the left-side wheel arch. In here I have got all the essentials that I would need regular access to like, the tyre air compressor, clothes for everyday cleaning, a car vacuum cleaner etcetera.
5. For the quintessential paper towel accessible to the driver, I have got a sun visor-mounted clip-on device from Amazon.
6. I carry a bottle of water in the car for the window washer. For this one also I had to get somewhat resourceful and got a bracket 3D printed to strap the bottle onto the left roll cage.
7. I used to keep my Mobile phone in the cup holder behind the Hand Brake before. Recently, I added a magnetic mobile mount between the centre console AC vents. I think this is a nice and fitting place for the mobile. I think it looks neat.
The Kerala Trip
This trip was done with my wife and my 3-year ol’ baby girl. They took the rear seat over the whole trip. The onward and return trips were done in two stages in each direction, with stopovers at Devanagere (onward) and Chitradruga (return). The stoppages were planned at about 700 kilometres per day driving. This has been the usual style every time I have travelled to Kerala by road. I was a bit worried about the ride quality getting the better of my ladies at the end of a full day’s travel in Thar’s rear seats. But to my surprise, my ladies and my Gorilla came out with flying colours.
While in my home town in Kerala, I did a trip to Munnar as well. This time I did not go to the usual ‘Spots’ in Munnar rather took some less travelled routes for a change. That decision allowed us to go through some of the most scenic places in Kerala like Lokhart estate, Chinnakenal, Anayirangal Dam, Rajakkad etc. Throw into the superb views the butter-smooth roads too, the overall experience became mindboggling. Not that I got a chance to put Thar to the test, but that trip has down as one of the most memorable road trips ever.
In Thar Petrol AT one has to put the AT Mode selector to M to activate engine braking. On many of the long declines in Munnar, I had to constantly rely on the TC manual mode to avoid brake fade. However, the manual mode and the engine braking it provided just did not come as naturally as shifting to a lower gear in a manual car. I think I will have to get used to the Manual Mode in my car.
All-in-all the Kerala trip added 4000+ km to the odo in two weeks. I got an average fuel economy of about 10kms to the litre (tank to tank) overall. One thing that I have found driving Thar on the highways is that the best fuel economy is achieved at around 80kmph. On some of my earlier road trips, with 80kmph as the max speed and a light foot on the gas pedal, the mileage had touched a real-world figure of 11.5kms. However, on my Kerala trip, I was not keeping 80kmph but constantly touching 95kmph on cruise control and many times much above that as well. Thar felt composed and I felt in control at those speeds on the smooth highways. I tried 120+ also for short bursts just to test. At such speeds, the steering felt lifeless and I sat there at the edge of the driver’s seat petrified. The engine and AT combination allow Thar to cruise at a comfortable 1600 RPMish at 100 km/h.
With cruise control ON, when one presses the RES button after completing the ‘cursing manoeuvre’ on a slow-moving truck on the fast lane, the acceleration to ‘RES speed’ is rather strong. Much stronger than I normally would, if using the gas pedal manually. This, I feel, is one of the things to look out for if you wish to get better fuel economy. Simply using cruise control more often and for larger distances alone won’t get you better fuel economy. During a cruise control reset or RES situation, I have figured out that it is better to control the accelerator manually till near cruising speed and then press the RES button or not to use the RES button at all. The acceleration thereafter feels more natural and would probably help the fuel economy as a bonus.
The Parking Procedure
There is no clear procedure as to how the vehicle is to be parked. My procedure until recently has been – to put the transmission to P while keeping the service brake pressed and then pull the hand brake lever. But at times, I have observed some resistance from the transmission and an unpleasant jerk when disengaging from P, especially when I’m parked on an incline. Though I totally understand what is causing the jerk, I let it be, until the mechanical engineer’s sixth sense in me started to bother too much. So, lately, I have changed my style, now I first apply the handbrake, select Neutral and release the service brake (by doing this, the car is now fully held by the handbrake) and finally, I move the drive selector to P.
The Underwhelming Owner’s Manual
It is a pity that M&M keeps its customers in total darkness when it comes to the explanation of many of the car features in their manual. Saying that Thar Owner’s Manual is a half-assed job by Mahindra would be an understatement. Thar is a very capable SUV. But what is the whole point if its buyers go without knowing what capabilities their hard-earned money has bought? For example, the Manual does not have a single reference to Thar’s MLD; how it functions or when to use it. However, MLD is very nicely explained in ScorpioN’s Owners’ Manual. The Eaton sourced MLD locks with a noticeable jerk. If it gets activated out of the blue and takes the driver unaware of its functional characteristics, he would probably soil his pants believing that something has broken underneath. Furthermore, the manual does not say whether the Brake Traction Control (BTC AKA Brake Lock Differential) is limited to the front axle alone or it applies to the rear axle as well. With MLD at the rear, it doesn’t make any sense to have BTC on the rear axle as well, but then this logic may not be obvious to many.
One fellow BHPian was seen on a YouTube video saying his car’s ‘locking- differentials at the front and the back were not working. In the video, he was slipping the wheels too slowly for any of these systems to function. That guy apparently did not know that MLD at the rear only gets activated when the speed ‘difference’ between the two wheels at the rear is more than about 100 RPM. For that, however, he has to stop the TCS from cutting the power. I reckon even the BTC/ BLD up at the front needs some reasonable speed difference to do its job. My take in such situations would be; if you are stuck with one rear wheel slipping at low speed, don’t worry too much about the wasting rubber- hit the gas with the TCS OFF. Let the wheel spin faster, this would get MLD activated and save your day. Yeah, you should brace for the jerk MLD would put you through.
Thanks to the clandestine way M&M has been updating many features of the Thar from its launch incarnation in 2020, I had to go the length to do a small experiment to find out whether my car has MLD or not. I was not having this worry when I got the car in September 2022. But then M&M had not made MLD Optional at the time. Come November and there were ‘roomers’ that they had chopped this feature and made this optional in the Diesel variant. I got worried since in none of my drives MLD got activated till that time.
The only place where it says my Thar has MLD is an online brochure that I downloaded at the time of booking, on which the fine print in effect said M&M had the right to change specifications without prior notice. And they did change the switch gear, the silver paint job, and who knows what all. What a joke!
MLD is not visible in any form on the vehicle, it neither has a button to engage nor a light that pops up on the dash or anything unless it gets activated in a proper off-road condition. In my case, they had put a rust inhibitor coating on the nameplate on the assembly too. So, decided to find out. I lifted the rear axle on one side and put the car on Drive. MLD got activated with a jerk and I had a sigh of relief.
The Owner’s Manual has the final drive ratio and all other individual drive ratios mentioned but the Low Ratio of the transfer case is nowhere to be seen. They decided to keep that a secret. This was mentioned in the outgoing model’s Manual but not in the 2020 Thar’s.
If blokes from M&M are reading this, please note you should work on making your vehicle manuals more comprehensive. We are a big fan of your work but you guys should believe in completeness and fine detail. And Grammarly is free, you should use it too. Lest if your half-cooked mashed manuals are carried overseas to English-speaking countries, your otherwise smart and sensible products would be taken as nothing different from cheap Chines-ium.
When some monkeys decided to take an inside look!
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