A (C)Rude Shock. Review on Mahindra Bolero Invader

I have been driving a Bolero GLX 2WD for a little over two years now and am reasonably happy with it. Over the last 60,000 kms, my Bolero never pretended to be sophisticated and smooth, but it did get me from Point A to Point B reliably!Anyways, I ended up buying a Bolero Invader GLX 2WD about two weeks ago simply because I thought it is better to go with a known devil. Here is the rest of my dard bhari kahani

I picked up the vehicle and drove out of Vijai Auto Sales in Bangalore in heavy rain on August 1st. Within minutes, I realized that whatever quality lessons Mahindra had learnt on the Bolero and Scorpio were wasted on this brute. The car was letting in rain water at two spots in the soft top, the suspension was squeaking to the point of embarrassment, the windows were fogging up badly because there was not even a blower provided(!), the overall visibility around the driver was poor. Anyways, having forked out the money, I had to cut my losses. I drove it home and parked and my gate and out of curiosity took a peek at the instrument panel. Imagine my shock when I saw that my ''NEW'' car had 1360 kms on the Odometer. I was completely stunned! Being that it was already past closing time I could not do much more than call the Sales person from Vijai and his casual response was - ''But Sir, the vehicle came by road from Nasik''. When I asked him why he had not bothered to mention this to me over the 2-3 days when he was after me to buy this car, he had no response. To make a long story short, my confidence in my ''NEW'' car and Mahindra & Mahindra was completely shattered within a space of thirty minutes after I bought the Bolero Invader. This will likely be the last Mahindra in my life.

Anyways, in the last two weeks I have taken this ''NEW'' car out once to B.R Hills and it performs miserably on the highways. It is bumpy as heck because the back is so light and cabin comfort is non-existent. After a drive of 230 kms, my body felt like it had gone to hell and back. The only thing going for this new brute from Mahindra is that it has decent torque and those aggravating autos stay out of my way.

Finally, a personal message to Mahindra & Mahindra - Please do not insult the intelligence of your customers by pitching this as an urban vehicle.