The brief to the designers and engineers was to make a “pa and pal’s car”. And the Mahindra Marazzo turned out be exactly that. “It is not just for your family; it is for your family and friends,” says Ramkripa Ananthan, head of design at Mahindra and Mahindra.
Mahindra developed the Marazzo with an engineering collaboration between Mahindra Automotive North America, Detroit, and Mahindra Research Valley, Chennai, and a design collaboration between Pininfarina, Italy, and Mahindra Design Studio, Mumbai. The total cost of the project was $200 million.
The Marazzo sits between the Maruti Suzuki Ertiga and the Toyota Innova, and comes with the options of 7- and 8-seaters. The 7-seater offers captain seats and the 8-seater bench seats in the second row. The seats are well-contoured and there is plenty of legroom, headroom and shoulder room. There is also a 7-inch touchscreen and a new ‘Surround Cool Technology’, which gives you both direct and diffused airflow. The second and third rows also get sunshades. The aircraft inspired brake lever is a nice design touch.
The newly developed 1.5 litre (1497cc), 4-cylinder engine (weighing just 141.13kg with 52 per cent high-strength steel), has an east-west engine placement, which helps in better space utilisation. Says Ananthan, “For a designer, it is great because we get this wide, low, sporty stance.”
The six-speed manual transmission is really smooth, and the suspension settings are so good that bumps make little impact inside. Thanks to the disc brakes on all four wheels, not once did the vehicle feel jittery upon braking. The M8 variant, which is the top trim, comes with 17-inch tyres; the other variants have 16-inch tyres.
Available in six colours and four variants, the Marazzo comes with a three-year/100,000km warranty and an annual maintenance contract which is renewable. Starting at Rs 9,99,000, this is undoubtedly one of the best offerings in recent times from Mahindra.