Poor Man's ML
The Rexton is a fabulous or a fabulously bad car depending on how many lakhs you have in your bank account
There are two ways to get a double-barrel surname – you can marry William, sunbathe without your bottom on in France or you can watch as your company gets bought out by another like Rexton did. Add to this the fact that the Rexton probably has a more illustrious heritage than the naked Dutchess. It was born to German parents (based on the Mercedes Benz W163ML platform) it was then sold off to the South Koreans (the good or the bad ones depending on the side you were on during the Cold War) and then landed in India through an Indian automobile manufacturer.
Even if you ignore the rest of the ranting, if the words ‘Mercedes’, ‘Mahindra’, ‘India’ hit home you’ve probably got more takeaway from the intro than our Prime Minister’s speech after the Anti-Rape protests. The Rexton is a fabulous car, but the best thing about it isn’t its engine, its automatic transmission, safety features or its trim, but its price tag.
By now, pros at the price tag war, Mahindra has positioned Ssyangyong Rexton a cool two odd lakhs below the likes of the one-a-month selling Mitsubishi Pajero Sport or even the SUV that Punjabi wet dreams are made of – the Toyota Fortuner.
The Rexton is a fabulous/boring car depending on whether you can afford the ML or not. The Mahindra signature is mercifully missing in design (save for a small chrome badge on the tailgate) inside the power train is a 2.7 litre, 5-cylinder diesel mated to 5-speed automatic or manual. Even though on paper the automatic transmission seems to be the meatier one of the two producing 22 bhp more than the manual’s 162bhp, it’s let down by an appallingly lazy gearbox. The automatic also gets an AWD, which we are told can make this two tonne behemoth do 100 in 10.9 seconds. The automatic also comes with buttons on the steering to shift gears manually and a switch on the gear stalk to shift up and shift down. Unarguably, the Rexton is infinitely more fun to drive in the manual mode, which leads us to wonder whether it’s the manual and not the automatic that is the one to bet on (the manual is even cheaper than Endeavour).
Even then, this isn’t the car you’d go nuts in, or have a lot of fun in – there isn’t one lunatic bone in its body – it’s made to cruise, crush potholes under its 16 inch tyres and trod over most things thanks to its 252 mts ground clearance. It’s what you’d call a civilised SUV especially in its fighting league. Agreed the Fortuner seems angrier, more aggressive and the Endeavour has the whole breadbox on wheels thing going on, but that’s where the place lies for the Rexton – it’s the car that none of Mahindra’s cars have ever been accused of – the softie amongst goons.
The dashboard, though stocked, is lagging at least a decade behind other cars, but the Rexton more than makes up for this by the sheer amount of goodies it has to offer. Everything from a touchscreen interface, rear sensors, cruise control, climate control, intelligent headlamps and wipers and what not. The seats come with the memory function and they automatically adjust to aid in ingress and egress once you jam in the key.
That said, the Rexton very much isn’t the car you’d drive if you were 30 and had the money to throw, it’s the kind of a car you borrow from your father when you are 22.
From the January 2013 issue of FHM India.
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