Scorpio N: the only SUV-cum-MPV
Before we start, let’s understand what “SUV” means. It means body-on-frame construction and that it’s not front-wheel-drive.
A lot of the cars sold as SUVs — Creta, Seltos, Taigun / Kushaq, Hector, Hyryder / Grand Vitara, Mahindra 3XO, XUV 400, Jeep Compass, Honda Elevate and Citroën Basalt — are actually crossovers, since they’re front-wheel-drive and don’t have a body-on-frame construction.
SUVs are suited for towing and for going offroad. Or if the vehicle is going to be shared between multiple employees at your company who are going to going to drive it all day, every day, and treat it roughly because they’re not skilled or because it’s not theirs. If none of these use cases applies to you, you shouldn’t buy an SUV. It’s going to be noisy to drive. It’s going to vibrate a lot. It will look ugly rather than sleek like a M. G. Windsor or Creta. Everything about the SUV will be rough. A crossover will meet your needs better. Buying an SUV when you don’t intend to do SUV things is like buying a TV to listen to music: sure, the TV has internal speakers, but buying a dedicated speaker will work out better.
Let’s say you’ve decided to buy an SUV. Then the primary contenders are the Scorpio N and the Thar Roxx1. The rest of this post explores the Scorpio N in detail, but before that, the Scorpio also counts as an MPV, since it has three rows of seats, and the third row folds, so that you can load large cargo:
If you want a vehicle that can handle both SUV use cases (rough use, off-road, towing) and MPV use cases (accommodating 6 people and long cargo depending on the situation), the Scorpio N is the only game in town. It comes in both petrol and diesel versions.
- 3 rows
- The car is 4.7 feet long, so it’s hard to park.
± The car weighs 1.9 tons.
± Cruise control but not adaptive.
± Torque converter, 6-speed
± Leatherite
+ The SUV has a front camera to aid in parking, but no sensor, so it doesn’t beep.
- The auto wipers didn’t work. Initially the salesman tried to dismiss it saying it didn’t rain enough, but after a while, he agreed that it wasn’t working.
- When I made a sharp turn into a side street, one of the tools in the boot tumbled to the other side.
SUV Features
+ The Scorpio N is normally in rear-wheel-drive mode, but when you get stuck in sand or mud, you can switch to 4-wheel-drive.
+ The SUV can tow 2.5 tons
+ It comes with traction control, which helps prevent getting stuck off-road.
- It doesn’t have traction control modes like sand or mud, which perform better. According to ChatGPT, once you tell the SUV what kind of terrain you’re traversing, it can adjust to that. For example, a certain amount of wheel spin is good on sand to keep moving, while wheel spin bogs you down in mud.
+ Hill descent control.
Comfort
- Poor legroom
- My stomach was pressed, making it uncomfortable, so I raised the seat, but that made the headroom inadequate. In this car, you’ll suffer, but you can choose where to take it — in your head or in your stomach.
+ Electrically adjustable seat
- Thigh support isn’t adjustable
+ Lumbar is adjustable
- The engine makes a lot of noise while accelerating.
- When you come to a stop, the brake is jerky. The front passenger keeps getting jerked forward. This also happened when the salesman was driving, so it’s not a problem with my driving.
+ The Scorpio N is the easiest of all vehicles to enter and exit, because I climb up into the SUV, not lower myself down.
Driving
- The SUV has the worst body roll2 of all vehicles I test-drove, even compared to other body-on-frame vehicles like the Roxx or the Fortuner. It feels like standing on top of a pin. When I changed lanes at 80, there was significant body roll.
- With this experience,
- The vehicle itself vibrates at certain speeds.
± You need to press the accelerator significantly to accelerate.
± I had a high driving position.
- I couldn’t honk with one finger the way I can on my Ritz.
± Idle stop go
Cooling
+ Full width sunroof
- Not panoramic.
+ Ventilated seats
- No cooled glovebox
+ Climate control
+ You can turn on the AC remotely using the app
+ Dual-zone AC
- Can’t sync both zones
- No rear window sunshades
- To adjust where the air should go, like legs vs face vs both, you have to use a touchscreen, but the AC adjustment UI is buggy. When you tap the desired icon in the carousel, it blinks but doesn’t activate. You have to scroll, but the touchscreen isn’t sensitive. Fiddling with a touchscreen while driving is dangerous, all the more so a second-rate touchscreen.
- You can’t turn off rear AC from the driver’s seat, short of turning off all AC.
Safety
+ Seat belt pretensioner with force limiter
+ Adjustable seat belt
+ ESC
+ EBD
+ Full airbags
+ DRLs
+ Auto headlights, LED, projector
+ TPMS
- No emergency brake assist
- No blind spot monitoring
- No lane departure warning
- No active rollover protection
Digital features
- No USB-C port
+ Two USB-A ports
+ HD screen
- The touchscreen isn’t sensitive, not even like a decade-old smartphone, and requires a deliberate touch.
- Comes with Map My India, which doesn’t load
- Mediocre Sony sound system
Front passenger seat
- I couldn’t stretch my legs comfortably.
- Only sliding and backrest are adjustable, not height or thigh support.
± Not electrically adjustable
- Poor headroom
- During acceleration, I felt multiple vibrations per second in the seat backrest. The SUV is rough and unrefined, a far cry from the elegance and comfort of the Creta, to say nothing of EVs.
- I could feel vibrations and undulations from the road even at moderate speed.
Middle row seat
- I couldn’t stretch my legs comfortably
- Poor headroom
- Since the sunroof isn’t panoramic, it doesn’t extend back.
+ USB C
+ Dual vents, independently adjustable (left/right/up/down), with an AC control
+ You can opt for captain’s chairs in the middle row, for a 6-seater, rather than a 7.
- When you pulled the lever to un-recline the seat, it sprang forward and hit me. It pained for a few seconds. This never happened in any other car.
- It felt like there was almost no cushioning. I felt vibrations even at 70 kph. It’s a bad seat. It felt like traveling in a 20-year-old car.
+ The center armrest has two cup holders
- The rear window isn’t panoramic, since my eyes are near the top of the window.
vs Roxx
Now that the Roxx is out, many people are wondering about whether to buy it instead. Both are SUVs — ladder frame construction, rear-wheel drive on roads and 4WD on roads, suitable for towing and offroading…
Here’s how the Scorpio N fares in comparison to the Roxx:
- I have good headroom and legroom in the Roxx, while both are poor in the Scorpio N. My stomach is pressed in the Scorpio N, making it uncomfortable, while it’s comfortable in the Roxx.
- The Scorpio N is longer at 4.7 meters as opposed to 4.5 for the Roxx, making the former harder to park.
- The Scorpio N has a lot of body roll, making driving on the highway uncomfortable.
If you want to know more, compare each section of this review with the corresponding section of the Roxx review.
That’s how it compares as an SUV. But the Scorpio N is an MPV, too. If you want a vehicle that can handle both SUV use cases (rough use, off-road, towing) and MPV use cases (accommodating 6 people and long cargo depending on the situation), the Scorpio N is the only game in town.
The Fortuner is ruled out since it costs twice as much while being more or less the same as one of these Mahindras.
This means that the car tilts to the right when you turn left (or change to the left lane).