Test driving Xylo. Review on Mahindra Xylo

I have been driving Indica Turbo for the past 3 years. The only reason I settled for a hatch back like Indica was since I wanted a diesel car as I love traveling a lot and more importantly, Scorpio was not within my budget that time( it's even out of reach right now). Still somewhere I yearn for a SUV/MUV kind of vehicle as that has always ben my 1st preference. So the other day when I saw the new XYLO full spread in newspapers, the features it offered and the price it was launched at, my eyes popped out. I had to test drive the car and so dragged along my reluctant wife("why do we want to upgrade our car right now? let's get over with the remaining 2 years EMIs and then think!") to Mahindra outlet in Camp Pune. The car is on display inside their showroom and is displayed in the middle hall. I had always seen this car shuttling between Pune - nasik garbed in black cloth while it was under test but had not known then that it was the same car.

The first thing that impresses you about XYLO is its looks. It's impressive, probably not that grand as Scorpio but definitely no poor country cousin. It certainly has managed to create a distinctive identity of its own. The front part has the Mahindra touch - the familiar Mahindra DNA - the chrome grill, huge'eyes' etc. The interior is quite spacious especially the middle and rear seat area. There is quite good leg space - something which you will find missing in Innova if you happen to sit in rear seat. They had displayed the top end E8 model in the show room. I won't go into features that are available in top end or other models since you can find that on the net but would like to highlight that these features are what make XYLO stand out from rest of its competitors. Everything inside is really thought through. My wife liked the recliner co passenger seat which can be attached to the middle seat and turned into a full flat recliner bed. The good thing is that this feature is available even in low end E2 model so that's good. Now few words about the test drive. As I settled myself behind the steering wheel, the thing I liked or rather'felt' was the pure comfort factor. The seats are damn comfortable. The top end model has armrest and they don't intrude while driving and really help when you are in cruise mode - you can simply rest your arm on the arm rest. The gear was surprisingly a little hard to shift - infact I found it a little harder than my Indica Turbo - but it was not much of a problem. The AC is very powerful and people who want to opt for low end model can def go for it and feel assured that the entire car would get cooled. Just for info the other models have personal AC vents on top of each seat. The drive was good and with windows rolled up, there was hardly any noise from outside that creeped in. For its size, the car was surprisingly very easy to turn on sharp bends and corners as I discovered that during various turns inside the camp area.

Over all very comfortable, spacious and now I m seriously thinking of upgrading my car but still it would be a herculean task to make wifey say yes for it:)