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-   -   New MHawk Refresh - First on TBHP! (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-drives-initial-ownership-reports/56473-new-mhawk-refresh-first-tbhp-6.html)

RedLiner/Venky saw all the pictures and the posts. Hearty congratulations and I liked the colour choice.And thanks to hrag for the pictures showing bits and peices of the proud owner and even the hawk beside "powered by MHawk" logo. A few queries to get into the Scorpio mode as mine is now moving by truck from Nashik since yesterday.
-Whats the ICE (make and configuration) you have gone for? How much does it cost?
- How safe is the OE immobiliser as Autocar India (April 2009) has reported a Scorpio theft in Mumbai where the OE immobiliser was mobilised, it seems.
-Awaiting your impressions here as the first teambhpian to become the proud owner of the new model Scorpio.

Don't you dare call me dude, Daddy's Boy.

Redliner congrats on your new purchase; Scorpio is actually a good VFM proposition now. Alloys and a carryboy bullbar would make it a killer.
@ Hrag as they say- a picture is worth a thousand words, though you seem to be good at both.

Alrighty!

I just got back from Mysore and the drive was quite peaceful, barring the usual histronics on national highways in India. Since I had to keep the throttle input below 100kmph all the way through, it made the braking easier. Now I shall bid heed to all your questions!

Ex Showroom Bangalore (I think M&M has standardised the ex-showroom prices across the country - thankfully!): 8,11,683

Extended Warranty: 9,999 for 2 additional years and 50k more to top up the 2 years and 50k I get standard. Thats a good 100k kms + 4 years. Hope to wrap that 100k up before the 4 years and milk this investment.

Then you have Insurance which I got from Bajaj Allianz for 20,800. Dealer quote: 32k. TATA AIG (friend works there): 23,800. Called Bajaj Allianz as the TATA AIG agent was sitting across me, and hooked to a dude in Coimbatore who really wanted to sell the insurance to me. Took it.

Then you have registration and road tax - which I am going to go myself and pay and register this car on Monday/Tuesday the coming week. That will work out to about a 110k.

So adding all of them up now and I really dont want to get depressed and thus will let you do the math and cringe.

THe refresh is basically as the name suggests a refreshed new look for the Scorpio. Considering they changed only the exterior with the interior being the same, I think its half an apple pie.

No discounts. I negotiated hard for the Bolero which was my initial order, and then for the 2.6 which was being phased out, but when it came to this, I ran out of juice and momentum.

OTR: On The Road?

This is what years of offroading and training your eye on every single inconsequential pebble on an OTR route does to you. Makes you eccentrically finicky! Thats not a scratch! Thats SLE written with a water soluble sketch pen. The car's bumpers, and what not has been marked SLE all over.

SLE, like I said above. The gear level does vibrate. More on that through my initial drive and passenger perceptions review coming up.

I plan to hack the entire front grill off and getting a grill-mesh fabricated. Having my girl do a photoshop job and finetune the thing.

Well, I've only driven FIAT's extensively, and even now in comparison, the FIAT is miles ahead in every sense of the clutch of Indian cars that abound the market. And the fuel meter does swing down when I switch off in the FIAT. With the fuel meter staying up, you're pretty much only giving a thief an idea of how long he can swing the car before his wallet catches up with him.

The build quality seems to be good. Bumps get soaked up. I am training my ears to hear squeaks and the odd rattle. Slamming the doors does not irk you. On the contrary you want people to slam them, or else they dont shut right.

Thanks Anjan. The color choice was really not the first one, and I will come to how I narrowed it down (or rather the color narrowed me down!).

I slapped the ICE from the FIAT to this. I got the ICE about 3.5 years back and she's still going strong. An Alpine I smuggled in from Europe (which has 3 pre-outs), JBL components for the front, and Infinity Kappa's for the rear and I am set. The HU then cost me 14k, and the rest came up to about 10/12k. I would highly recommend you spend good money on good stuff upfront. Get a good Pioneer 5050 which is kind of mid market, and get JBL's to round off the front and rear soundstage and that should be good enough. If you go for an Alpine, will be a little more expensive, but worth the trouble.

Join up Scorpio on Yahoogroups. Fun chaps. And the guy whose Scorp got stolen is a member. The Scorp's when delivered all come with the same immobilizer code. M&M does not inform people about it for a reason only they know. Once I got to know this from this member, I ran to the showroom and got them to teach me how to change it, and now I have. Please do it when you take delivery. I dont want to mention how its done on a public forum for obvious reasons.

The guy has gone out and got himself a new Scorp all over again.

Oh and I'm gonna have fun doing it!

Hold on guys, lemme grab some pop corn first! lol:

Welcome back from the Mysore trip.
Thanks a lot for the ICEY information.
I too felt frustrated on hearing that there were no discounts waiting! They simply said thats its a REFRESHED Scorpio and the company policy is no discounts for the REFRESH. I phoned the Raipur and Aurangabad dealers to know of any discounts that were eluding me here, but the salesmen echoed the same REFRESH policy of M & M with no discounts.They said the company has reduced the prices.
The immobiliser information is valuable Venky.

The new scoprio is supposed to have redesigned seat cushions for all three rows. Do you feel any difference with the earlier seats?

Better thigh support and the seats feel more buckety. Cushioning is also better.

:Shockked:
OOPS, SORRY BROTHER, if that offended you.
btw, 'dude' is not as offending as 'Daddys Boy', especially when we know nothing about each other.
anyways, chill.

no worries red liner, there shall be no arguments on your ownership thread for such petty issues. :)

That was pretty much the question. And the answer was not that obvious.

I always wondered why people were finding it so difficult to choose the color of their car. I had it figured that its so easy. You buy a Ferrari, its got to be Red. You dont want people to know its a Ferrari, you get a black. You get a lambo, its got to be Yellow. If you are F*lambo*yant, then its got to be an Orange.

The SLE variant of the Scorpio comes in 4 basic colors.

WHITE



I think this color is the favorite amongst our glorious civilization when it comes to buying new cars. White is supposed to symbolise purity, godliness, cleanliness, and what not. It is also supposed to symbolise power in the Indian context. No wonder the political and government class go gaga over this color. And no wonder our infatuation for fair *white* skin. Thank god for Bipasha Basu.

My mom was quite adamant about this color, since she saw the Scorpio ad, and Mahindra vehemently advertises its new Refresh with only this color everywhere. Its almost akin to bludgeoning the image into your brain. I was not very keen on the white at all, but heck - all of us are mama's boys. Mama wants something, she gets it.

BLACK



This color is the absolute opposite to the White. Though it symbolises power in the western world (all of the political class travel in black SUV's/Limo's), in India, its the color of the devil (guess all TBHPians who drive black cars are devils eitherways). The SLE Black came with Silver cladding. I did not like that. Was quite flashy.

So this color, according to my mum was out. Totally. Absolutely out.

ROCKY BEIGE



Honestly, I did not care for the color. When I did see some Scorpio's running around with this color, I did not turn around. No heads turning need not be such a bad thing - as I come to think about later.

SILVER

I had not seen a Silver. The Silver in the Refresh comes with the cladding in Silver as well.

Since we had only gotten to see a White Scorpio in all its splendor thanks to M&M's generous prime time ad spend, I went ahead and placed an order for a White 8 seater.

I chose the 8 seater because I could play around with the seat configuration more. The last bench could be removed and slotted in a jiffy (couple of jiffies as I came to realise later), and the middle bench could be reclined well behind. One part of the rear seat can be reclined individually, which I found to be a boon on my just concluded mysore trip, since my little cousin was throwing up and wanted to sleep, whilst her mom and mine wanted to sit up straight. The Scorpio considered her little wish done!

6 days prior to promised delivery, I get a call from a sales guy in Sireesh - a guy whom I had never heard of before. He said, there's a white scorpio with the 8 seater configuration - would you like it?

Hell yeah!

So why didnt you tell me earlier? Or why wasnt I getting mine delivered in the first lot as promised? Or is someone not able to fork out the cash? Lot of questions. The guy came over to my office with a VLX Mhawk so that we could drive to the stockyard and check for ourselves. I cut the cheque for the entire car right in front of him, and he knew I meant business.

I drove the Mhawk all the way there. Amazingly, I had never test driven the Mhawk beyond 2 kms before making my decision. This time, I decided to have fun. I red lined the thing until I got tired of the turbo whistle. That should say it all. Though the engine check light was on all the way, and the clutch was absolutely shattered.

We drove into the stockyard and I could see a whole bunch of gleaming Scorp's hanging around for their new families to take them in. It almost felt like walking into an adoption agency.

I see one White SLE, one Silver SLE and one R-Beige SLE. All standing next to each other.

The White was a 7 seater. And it came with JK tyres. She looked gorgeous from the front. I mean it. Straight out of a transformers movie as one member here out it. But she looked way to flashy. Way to hot. She looked like one of those high maintenance chicks who will only drink absolut vodka at the already horribly over priced bar. And I could seriously hear this ringing in my head:

Guy sitting in a small puny korean/jap car at a signal remarking "Look at this guy sitting in this new white scorpio. Must definitely be a real estate reddy garu guy who has minted money by selling land near the new international airport and this is his latest toy".

Jeez, I did not want this color.

I walked over and saw the Silver. Now the Silver looked good. I mean, the cladding was also silver - and the new cladding really adds more substance to the car and makes horrible colors look more complete.

What put me off though was that Silver is too boring. Too executive. Too accountant'ish. A friend I dialled in was all out for the Silver though.

I walked over to the poor beige who was not getting much attention. She was a 8 seater from the get go. The sales guy walked over to me. I was already sweating profusely, standing on an open ground with metres of metal for company, the sun's heat bouncing off all of us. He said he could shift over the middle and last bench from the 8 seater beige to the 7 seater white. I had specifically asked for this operation to be done in front of me and he agreed.

I was still feeling forced to get the White, and I checked her tyres out, and it was JK! Me no like JK! Me want BStone! The Beige has BStones! I wanted to the tires shifted too. I raised a hue and cry right there and jumped up and down for real. They relented and gave in. But I had still not made my decision on the color.

I liked the Beige for some odd reason. She was neither green, nor grey. Neither here nor there. Very subtle. Very low maintenance. The lines of the car flowed ever more smoother. She looked a lot more rounded and understated. Much more rough and tough than either the black or the white. Both the Black and white looked like urban assault vehicles. The beige looked for expedition, and that is what I wanted to do.

That word - expedition - sealed it.



I sealed the order and walked out the door. But not without some more drama which I again created hell for and made the sales guy sweat so profusely, he must have had a severe case of dehydration.

Red Liner, you've articulated the colour choice process very eloquently! clap:
Much the same went through my mind when I had to choose.
It had to be 'Soft Beige'; she was meant to travel through mud and slush in the mountains.
And mud sits so well on her! Becomes one with the earth .....

Look:
.....................

That is just sweet...you never tire showing off this picture do you :p

RedLiner, nice explanation for your choice.
Enjoy your ride !

@hrag - what colour is your truck - the above comment seems directed at you.

the beauty of white is that you can scratch it and touch it up, and scratch it again. My indica has been through quite a few cycles :D

IIRC Hrag has a white truck!

Lovely write-up Red Liner! Enjoyed reading it!

Have fun with your truck!