Mahindra 3XO: Cramped and Buggy
I did an extended test drive of the Mahindra 3XO petrol crossover1, covering the city and the highway, and evaluated it against my requirements. I wouldn’t buy it, because it’s too cramped and too buggy.
Here are the strengths (+) and weaknesses (-) of the car:
- Uses leather, which I don’t like since it involves cruelty to animals.
+ Under-arm storage area
- Can’t honk with one finger
- Some variants of the car like AX5 Luxury come only with white seats. In one of the Mahindras I test-drove that has white seats, the seats were dirty. So see if you can buy one of the variants that lets you choose a dark-colored seat.
- The salespeople are clueless and unresponsive and, in general, the Mahindra experience is poor.
Comfort
- My stomach is pressed, due to the low seating position or the seat base being angled up.
- The legroom is insufficient. I can fix this by moving the seat back and down, but that presses my stomach. If I move it up, there isn’t enough headroom, because my head is close to the windshield header2. So, in this car, I’ll suffer, but I can choose where to suffer — stomach, head or legs.
- Thigh support isn’t adjustable.
- The driver’s seat isn’t electrically adjustable
- The steering wheel doesn’t telescope
- Vibrates when stopping and starting, as if the engine is straining against the brake.
- Acceleration is non linear even when you press the accelerator gently.
- The suspension is not as soft and comfortable as the Creta
Driving
+ Intense acceleration till 40 kph, and then good but smooth acceleration, comfortable for passengers.
+ Good acceleration even in eco mode
± Pulls slightly to the left when braking hard at high speed. This is common, and so subtle that it’s not a safety risk. I was very much within my lane even when I didn’t correct for this.
± 0-100 in 13 seconds
± You feel road vibrations from 130
+ Auto hold
- Eco, normal and sport modes are called zip, zap and zoom. This causes confusion when driving. If I want sport mode, what is it called? It must be zip, since will it make the car zip through traffic, right? Actually, zip is eco and zoom is sport. This is marketing hurting usability. Things already have well-known names, and we don’t need to come up with new names. Imagine if the steering wheel were called the direction controller.
± 1.2-liter turbo
- Torque converter, which isn’t as sporty as a DCT.
± 6 gears
± Electronic parking brake.
Digital features
- No USB-C in the front seat
+ CarPlay didn’t work, neither wired nor wireless.
- Bluetooth audio playback didn’t work — it stops playing immediately. This is shocking. Only Mahindra vehicles are the ones that can’t play music reliably. Mahindra is setting a new low in reliability.
Cooling
+ Climate control
+ The salesman claims I can turn the AC on remotely using the app, but since it’s Mahindra, I’ll believe it when I see it.
+ Cooled glovebox
- No rear window sunshades.
- No ventilated seats
- The sunroof is not panoramic. I’ve found panoramic sunroofs to work excellently in cooling the car instantly when it has been parked for hours in the afternoon summer sun. I don’t know how well a non-panoramic sunroof works.
Safety
+ When you change lanes without signalling, beeps and gently vibrates the steering wheel.
+ Blind view camera when indicating a turn on either side.
+ Beeps if the distance to the car in front is reducing rapidly. This is tuned well for Indian conditions: it never gave me a spurious alert, nor did it ever miss warning me when it was justified.
+ Seat belt pretensioner with force limiter
+ ESC
+ Side airbags for the head, torso and pelvis
+ DRLs
+ Auto headlamps
+ Lane-keeping assist
+ TPMS
Front passenger seat
+ I can stretch my legs comfortably
- Headroom is poor, but not as bad as the driver’s seat.
- No height adjustment
Rear seat
- My stomach is pressed more than in the front seats.
- Poor headroom; my head is close to the roof.
- The non-panoramic sunroof doesn’t extend back far enough, so it doesn’t feel open
- The seat belt presses my neck.
- I can’t stretch my legs comfortably.
+ USB-C
+ 12V
+ Smartphone holder
+ Dual AC vents, which can be adjusted up / down / left / right independently.
In summary, I wouldn’t buy the 3XO because it’s cramped and buggy.
With a unibody / monocoque construction.
The horizontal bar between the windshield and the sunroof.