Mahindra & Mahindra had finally confirmed a long-standing rumour that the five-door Thar is coming in 2024. Announcing eight new products until 2027, the five-door Mahindra Thar is a part of that list and is set to arrive in the market sometime around 2022-23. The new-generation Mahindra Thar went on sale in 2020 and is a massive improvement over its predecessor.
The model’s stellar success despite being a lifestyle vehicle has played a major role in greenlighting the five-door Thar that not only will be more practical and hence should end up with more volumes. The other thing is that it could be called the Armada. An ode to the 5-door SUV from the brand, which is the ideal successor and carrying forward of the iconic name.
The Mahindra Thar 5-door will be based on the new Scorpio-N platform. The model will sport a longer wheelbase and an overall larger footprint compared to the sub-4-metre offering. At present, the new Thar’s length measures at 3,985 mm with the wheelbase at 2,450 mm. The Thar 5-Door will be 4.2 or 4.3 meters in length, making it sort of mid-size SUV rival such as Hyundai Creta and others in the category.
The Mahindra Thar 5-door will also overcome some practical shortcomings of the 3-door version. This includes access to the second row that’s difficult and not the most comfortable. Expect to see better legroom and thigh support coming there, as well as a wider bench. The second row will also get easier ingress and egress with the extra set of doors. The boot capacity will greatly improve on the five-door Thar, which is almost negligible on the three-door version.
The features list is going to be massive yet again! The SUV is set to get six airbags, front and rear parking sensors, ADAS, rear a / c vent, sunroof, automatic A/C, full LED lights, rear wiper, 19-inch wheels, digital speedometer and much more is easily expected from the SUV. This isn’t clearly a small exercise, as Mahindra is making the Thar platform more premium with more features.
Clearly, Mahindra is aiming to woo the private lifestyle buyers that have taken fancy to the three-door version. We do expect to see the 5-door Thar elevating Mahindra’s sales for the model, given the sheer accessibility it will bring for a number of buyers. The 2.0-litre mStallion turbo petrol and the 2.2-litre mHawk diesel engines will be retained on the upcoming offering, along with the 6-speed manual and automatic transmissions. However, the bigger news is that 4×2 variants will be offered from the word go. All this will make pricing impressive. The 5-Door Thar won’t get a 1.5 litre but get a 2.2 diesel motor with manual and automatic and RWD. The powertrain package has been extremely impressive, and there’s ample power on either combination to carry the extra weight that the five-door version will come with.
Despite the increased length, do not expect a reduction in the new Thar’s off-roading capabilities. The approach and departure angle will remain the same, but the break over angle could be reduced. The five-door body shell could also be wider to complement the longer wheelbase for better stability.
Expect the 5 Door Thar aka Mahindra Armada to see a price increase of Rs. 2–3 lakh, depending on the variant. This does drive up the price of the new Thar 5-door by quite a margin, with the on-road prices likely to breach the Rs. 20 lakh mark for the top-end variant. It needs to be seen if Mahindra will bring a hard-top and a soft-top version of the Thar 5-door or not.
