After the recent 2013 Union Budget brought nasty surprises for all the SUV makers in India, according to which all the cars which carry engines bigger than 1.5 liters in capacity, length greater than 4 meters and also with a ground clearance more than 170 mm are to be classified as SUVs. With this budget being introduced Mahindra was one of the UV maker which was hit by higher excise duties for its range of SUVs.
Mahindra’s plan for lowering the ground clearance has already been read in our earlier posts at the end of May by our dear readers at BharathAutos. We had already mentioned that Mahindra is planning to add a ‘stone guard’ to all its range of SUVs so that all their SUVs has ground clearance less than 170 mm which prevents them from paying higher excise duties. Mahindra’s XUV 500 will no longer attract additional 3 % excise duty making it 27,000 and 33,000 INR cheaper for the lower end W6 model and top end W8 model respectively. As the result of this price reduction, Mahindra expects to see an improvement in XUV sales by 10-15%.
The stone guard being introduced is a metal plate which prevents body underneath from being damaged by stones and also reduces the ground clearance to 160 mm which was 200 mm earlier. According to the reports from Economic Times, Mr. Pawan Goenka, Head-Automotive of Mahindra expressed his unhappiness about this modification, but said that he had to do it as the higher price due to the increased duty was taking a hit on their potential customers.
Also see – Rumor – Lower-spec Mahindra XUV500 W4 variant could be priced below Rs. 10 lakh
