Under the flat expanse of the TUV 300’s bonnet hides Mahindra’s new 1,493-cc turbocharged diesel engine, christened mHawk 80. Prior to the launch, back at the office, I had sat with the team and guessed if the ’80’ in the name related to the engine’s power output. Turns out we were all wrong; the peak power output of the three-cylinder engine is 87 PS and max torque is 230 Nm. Wait a second, did I just say three-cylinder? Well, guess what, the engine really is a three-cylinder engine, albeit with a two-stage turbocharger. The peak power kicks in at 3,750 RPM, but, and far more importantly, the max torque is available from a lowly 1,500 revs to 2,250 RPM. Although the SUV is available with a choice of an autoSHIFT automated manual transmission (AMT), we drove the one with the five-speed manual gearbox.
The first thing you notice is that despite being a three-cylinder engine, the Mahindra mHawk 80 feels fairly refined and balanced. The gear-lever travels quite a bit as you slot it into first and the clutch feels a smidge heavy. But then this is supposed to be a butch SUV; compact, but butch none the less. So such things can be dismissed as trivial. On the go, power delivery is linear and there is sufficient grunt on tap from the heart of this workhorse. Indeed, the workhorse aspect became even more apparent when I realised that I was shifting up between 1,500 and 2,000 RPM, evidence of the vehicle’s driveability. However, and contrary to what you’d expect this butch SUV to be doing, the grunt from the engine is mostly good for city use. On highways, the mHawk unit doesn’t feel powerful enough and overtaking can be a bit of work as you need to downshift and get into a lower gear each time. It’s fine as long as you can build up speed and maintain it, but once the momentum is lost (as can often happen on Indian highways) it’s a task getting it back again.
