[Tmittal93]

I am an owner of XUV 700 AX7L petrol purchased in May 2023, having covered 2000 KM. The car has very low running due to the fact that my Tata Tigor covers the daily duty and Honda City VX 2015 handles the small outings.

Since XUV has such low running, I have luckily not witnessed any faults so far.

Owning Honda city has been largely fuss free with minor issues, but Tigor is completely opposite standing true testament to the fact that Tata has 0 QC.

However, knowing Mahindra A.S.S. is also a hit or miss, I have always considered their vehicles extremely reliable, something that a lot of people would agree on.

The situation seems to be different now with the following cases coming to limelight:

1. XUV 700 burning in Jaipur in 2023- Company claimed it was due to after market fittings.

2. Another recent case of XUV 700 catching fire while parked outside the home of owner in Banaras- owner has claimed, it is top model and no mods have been installed. The company response has been a lousy one and no investigation has been launched.

3. The case of Scorpio N loosing control and owner loosing a leg after hitting a barrier on highway.

4. Another case of Scorpio N wheels not responding to steering wheel input on Ahmedabad highway.

5. Multiple cases of Thar catching fire.

There must be many other smaller cases that may or may not have caught media and public attention

This makes me wonder having spent close to Rs. 28.5L on this car that what if someday such an incident happens with me or my family.

The recent case with XUV 700 catching fire was parked outside owner's home in Banaras, mine is parked inside my house behind our main entry exit door. If something similar were to happen in my case, our whole house could catch fire with no exit either.

Currently lakhs of Mahindra cars are plying on road, and these are handful cases but still enough to raise question on reliability of a product costing this much.

Not installing after market mods is one thing, but one can never rule out lousy job done by service centres during service leading to some major incident in future.

What have other members to say about this? And what steps can we take with our limited knowledge about car's machinery to mitigate such incidents from happening to us or our family members?

Also, in most of above cases, Mahindra did not respond until the videos and news went viral, what can we do to ensure, we are heard if we were to suffer a major issue or incident?

[IshaanIan]

Ofcourse only a few out of the millions of Mahindras plying our roads will have such fatal flaws and that means that unless you have noticed anything odd about the way your car drives in any way, you should mostly be fine

The only thing we as consumers can do is boycott the brand until their standards improve. We are yet to hear about any progress with a member’s top of the line XUV500 that crashed so poorly without deploying the airbags that his son suffered extreme injuries. Now we have the XUV700 and the same disregard for consumer safety is displayed so clearly the brand has not changed at all.

I feel that guys like Tata and Mahindra sell well mostly due to consumer sentiment where people want to support local brands but if you look at other nations like Japan for example, 95% of all cars sold there are Japanese and Koreans, they absolutely stand by their Hyundais. When Mahindra and Tata are ready to do a good job they will surely sell far more but the problem is they already struggle to meet current demands so they just don’t care what bad news floats around about them because they are still yet to grow to a point where they witness lost potential in sales numbers due to such callous quality control standards

[Shreyans_Jain]

It is a hard fact that anything related to issues on Tata and Mahindra cars gets blown out of proportion. If you go around looking for issues, you will find that they happen across brands. There are entire threads here on airbags not deploying in Toyota cars, on Maruti’s dangerous steering system, on Hyundai’s rampant part failures after 4-5 years and on how the company uses inferior structural elements on its Indian products. Your car has not given you any reason whatsoever to doubt it. Personally, my suggestion to you would be to let go of the paranoia and enjoy the creamy turbo petrol.

But in case you keep having such thoughts, you are never going to use or enjoy the car. I mean, 2000km in a year, your car is literally just lying there rotting away, unused all the time. Think of how much money you are loosing in depreciation. Might as well sell it, you’ll get good value at this point. My suggestion would be to sell the ageing Tigor as well and get an Innova HyCross. You clearly value reliability and fuss free ownership above everything else, so nothing better than an Innova.

[Durango Dude]

To put your query into perspective, I think the saying that Mahindra's are reliable relates to probably the millions of old gen Bolero's plying the roads with minimal features/electronics. Modern day cars from the homegrown makers: Tata and Mahindra come loaded to the gills with electronics: ADAS and other features. Which with the level of QC from both of them makes it unreliable. I'd steer clear of both with their products: most of their high-end products are Rs 30L OTR, feature rich and despite 5* safety rating (chalti ka naam gaadi). I think at that price point they are short changing the customer with their poor QC and shoddy after sales service. Their own sales (Tata and Mahindra) folk say that they can't match Koreans and Japs on refinement and reliability then why price their products so high?

[Kosfactor]

You should worry more about your Honda City instead, its much more infamous in terms of catching fire, there has been global recalls and in India too. Its all there in our forum if you search for it.

Honda Recall over fire risk

Our forum too have several instances of Honda catching fire posted by our members.

But the more important message is that Social media algorithms can sometimes cause anxiety. Forget about it and enjoy your vehicle, avoid dodgy aftermarket fitments of course for peace of mind.

[dhanushs]

Originally Posted by Tmittal93

.. And what steps can we take with our limited knowledge about car's machinery to mitigate such incidents from happening to us or our family members?
...

Since you have already decided not to mess with the electricals, and service it properly.. And since your car doesnt have an issue.. The next best thing you can do to avoid such an incident is to stop driving altogether.

[samarthnarayan]

Originally Posted by Tmittal93

This makes me wonder having spent close to Rs. 28.5L on this car that what if someday such an incident happens with me or my family.

You have very genuine concerns, however it's something you cannot plan for after purchasing any vehicle, as nothing in this world is 100%. There is always a 0.1% failure chance. Also remember, many celebrities from Princess Diana to recently Cyrus Mistry died in car accidents, in some of the safest cars in the world.

Having said that, you or any consumer for that matter, can only do pre-purchase due diligence and since you and I share the multiple-car usage model, I can only share with you my thumb rule:

For Highway usage: Safety comes First. Reliability a close second and everything else a distant third. Especially in our morons filled Indian driving conditions.

So for me personally, safety means European! (With a few other non-European manufacturers included) and Reliability means Japanese.

Please Note:
Every major car manufacturing country, has it's own strengths and ethos. Which is kind of a reflection of their people's attitude in general:

For example:
The Japanese are known for Reliability, not just with their cars, look at Sony, Nikon, Canon, all reliable brands.

Similarly:
The Americans for Power, Engineering and Fun-to-Drive.
The Koreans for Features,Interiors and Looks
The Europeans for Engineering, Safety and Build Quality
The Chinese for Cheap, Reverse Enginnering and VFM.
And so now,
Even Our Indian manufacturers (Tata & Mahindra) have worked on their own ethos of Looks, Mileage and VFM offering.

Summary:
When choosing a car, for a particular need, in this case yours being Highway driving, I would recommend either buy European or Japanese, i.e Safety and/or Reliability.

That's the most peace of mind decision possible for any consumer. Rest leave it to Destiny.

[anjan_c2007]

I have spent several decades with Willy's, Jeep, Mahindra MUV's/SUV's that were either assembled or manufactured by this OEM. But I have never faced any fire issue other than one that I narrowly escaped. It was a Mahindra CJ 4A, fitted with the Solex carburettor, which had been just cleaned at a workshop but not well fitted. An old gasket was not replaced. Hence, petrol droplets were trickling down from the carburettor fitted, horizontally above the tappet cover on the engine block. And when I parked it I saw smoke emanating from the bonnet gap towards the windscreen. I immediately got a bucket of water, poured it on the Solex and the hot engine block, after opening the bonnet to douse the microflames that had started. The fire was purely as a result of human error.

At the moment my 2009 Scorpio, has done 15 years with me and just about two weeks ago, it got its fitness till 2027. It will be with me and other than missing the NCAP and ABS/EBD buses with this old one, I am a very happy owner of my Scorpio. I love it for its reliability and road presence.

As regards your XUV700, its generations ahead of the old Scorpio. Please do not get any type of repair or servicing jobs done by incompetent persons. As soon as your free servicing months are over, please switch over to a non ASC reputed workshop, if your ASC is not competent.

[Rocketscience]

Originally Posted by Shreyans_Jain

It is a hard fact that anything related to issues on Tata and Mahindra cars gets blown out of proportion.

Hugely disagree and I feel most of the backlash is very well deserved, they also get a lot of pat on the back for the great safety culture they are cultivating so there's that as well, point is an average joe cannot be expected to do their deep dive on the cars they buy, to keep a track of when most of the issues are ironed out and then buy a car, expect them to follow the owners manual to the T, expect them to be OK with spending their valuable time in service centers just to fix lame repeated issues, I myself feel some of Tata cars and most of Mahindra cars today are world-class and they deserve to do well globally, the engineering has made extreme strides and these may be the best local products produced in our country in any category, but the Quality Control is atrocious and the smaller issues are so common that they are a given in any car from these brands, the bigger issues are also much more than the Japanese and Korean brands, I am not for a second saying they are the only ones to have them but anecdotally, on the steet, on the forums, in social media, everywhere there is talk of these issues everywhere. I am not talking about fatal flaws here which can happen to any cars but even those are more common with these 2 as compared to other brands, but the widespread smaller faults have no justification and instead of defending these brands we should demand they take care of the last 5% in otherwise 95% great products, they should have a zero compromise approach, they just need to care about them enough and put their minds to it, these companies are legendary and have tackled way bigger major hurdles with aplomb, they just need to take care of these things now and they easily can if they put their minds to it. I am also completely sure than they will do this sooner than later.

[UD17]

Originally Posted by Tmittal93

What have other members to say about this?

I think, You are being too paranoid based on incidents discussed online. If you really search for the issues related to Honda city, you would find so many cases of components failures, fires, QC lapses etc.

Now that you have invested money in XUV and there are no issues with your vehicle, please enjoy your vehicle. The more you think, the more you remorse your decision.

[RGK]

Originally Posted by Tmittal93

I am an owner of XUV 700 AX7L petrol purchased in May 2023, having covered 2000 KM.
The situation seems to be different now with the following cases coming to limelight:

7L is one of the wonderful machine today. Had the opportunity to test drive the Ax7L - Diesel and was impressed by its powerful torque and performance.

Focus on enjoying the car without being distracted by what's happening around . Stay vigilant but there's no need to worry.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enjoy safe and pleasant driving with the vehicle.

[Maverick Avi]

You have mentioned a couple of instances where Mahindra or Tata car has caught fire. I have seen much more Swifts and Dzires in burnt state parked on sides of highways and main roads. Accidents like these can happen to any car. These days due to social media such sensational news gets circulated quite virally and hence the paranoia against them.

Just yesterday there was a bomb scare in Delhi schools. Parents just rushed to schools to pick up their wards even when some schools declared their premises safe. Nobody wants to take chances with their family and hence better safe than sorry reaction is getting common. I would say you should just rest all your concerns and enjoy your car till the time it actually starts to give you troubles. If anything you should be more concerned about are the rats which are more likely to cause a fire in even the most reliable cars on this planet.

[wooka]

Guys, this is a catch 22.
1. Petrol vehicles have a propensity to catch fire.
2. Mahindra makes their vehicles fairly heavy duty.. Give them some credit.
3. If the stats are 50 fires a year but 50k victims of coplar to coplar fitting from Karol Bagh and even worse pits (sector 16 market noida?), I'd say the stats are damn good.

But on the flip side, my engine harness had a short near the DPF sensor and it left me rather stranded in Leh. Their support was exemplary - fixing it in 1.5 days flat and providing me a standby cab for sightseeing.

However, wires, rats, poor aftermarket accessories, ethanol in our fuels etc.. There are too many variables. I'm going to Spiti next weekend. My vehicle's gone for a steering rack replacement today (the SN has very mild feedback probably from something that's not machined perfectly) and I'll still take it to Spiti next weekend cause I'd rather MnM over the others. I have my reasons. I've seen enough =)

BTW, tons of other vehicles fail at altitude and in the cold in Ladhak when an MnM generally trotters on. In fact, mantokling motors uses the MnM flatbed (or rather, theirs..) to pull out any number of mercs and VAG vehicles there since they simply aren't built tough.

Sharp reinforced metal shearing though a 2 ton scorpio N.. I shudder to think what would happen to lesser vehicles. Regarding EPS steering, I'd rather Hydraulic any day of the week, but the EPS on the scorpio really makes life a breeze in tight corners. If it comes with marginally higher failure rates, like all EPSes would, I can live with it (or not! Isn't that the question?)

An EPS that fails me when I'm driving by the Indus would probably be written off to another unitiated 'adventure SUV driver taking on the might of the Himalayas' when the reality could be something very different. It's a risk I take every day when I drive in a country with the highest vehicle accidents in the world, and I run the risk of repetition but I'll say it - I'd rather be in an MnM if I have to be in an accident than any other car. I can't afford volvos right now. That's that.

[F150]

You have exactly put the same thoughts in my mind to a post. I am in the market to purchase a SUV in 30 to 35 lacs range. Mind tells me to go for Innova Hycross or Tiguan by spending few more

[IshaanIan]

Originally Posted by wooka

If it comes with marginally higher failure rates, like all EPSes would, I can live with it (or not! Isn't that the question?)

I'd rather be in an MnM if I have to be in an accident than any other car. [/b] I can't afford volvos right now. That's that.

I’m sorry but I believe an electric power steering is far more reliable considering it is less complicated and has fewer parts involved in its functioning. I think you ought to do your homework if you actually believe that nothing comes close to the safety offered by a Volvo other than an MnM product