[cosmodan]

Automobile scenes in India were never exciting as it is now. Mahindra has the momentum advantage, just bring in a good Creta and Punch competitors, call it a day.

[07CR]

While its golden days for Mahindra, does it spell doom for Tata?

It looks little too bad, as they hit 21 month low

I also feel like Curvv would be an underperformer because of its neither here nor there nature. Betting very high on EVs, constant niggles and aftersales horrors, dependency on others for engines (Fiat 2.0, Hyundai 6 speed ATs), absence of petrol motors for large SUV shaped cars etc. seem to be major reasons for their downfall.

[kgt.v8]

Rise of Mahindra
Kudos to Mahindra for investing in mStallion and mHawk engines in past 4 years and it has paid well. New Mahindra products may have niggles, due to use of more electronics in newer cars as per my perspective.
Their engines are rock solid now, refined and tuned for performance. I have seen couple of YouTube videos from Australia where people have praised Scorpio-N and XUV700 and Mahindra's engines.

The strategy to go with SUVs only has paid well for Mahindra. Mahindra's product management team has laid very good life cycle for all their main SUVs.
The focus on one good product launch per year, keep people hooked about 1.5 years before the car launch by constantly testing the camouflaged cars, the camouflaged cars making their appearance on spy shots to keep buyers interest hooked plays well into the product launch hype and marketing.
In next 1-2 years, Mahindra needs to focus on facelift of Thar 3 door (in 2025), XUV 700 (in 2026), Scorpio-N (in 2027), XUV 3XO (in 2028), Thar Roxx (in 2029), BEV cars (around 2030) and then repeat all over again.


Attention Hyundai !
Hyundai needs to pay close attention to Indian market now. New offerings except Creta are not selling that well.
Hyundai cannot rely solely on Creta to keep their 2nd spot and achieve good sales month over month. Majority of Creta sale is coming from NA petrol MT and IVT, Diesel MT and Diesel automatic.
Creta DCT is selling in single digits in Telangana for past 3 months. Creta N-Line sells about 20-40 units per month which is more than Creta DCT.


Where did Tata go wrong
On the contrary, Tata's bet on EV has not paid well as EV sales are declining all over the world. The cost of battery replacement is still unknown after say 8 years when warranty expires.

I also contemplated buying an EV about 3 months back, installed couple of EV charging apps, tried to plan trips on those apps and did not find good number of chargers within 200km - 250km range especially for Northern part of India. The range anxiety and long charging times also made me hesitant to go for an EV for next 5 years at least.

I am a current Tata car owner, and I love Varicor 400 BS4 engine. Tata did not invest in Varicor 400 ICE engine R&D in 2020 to make it BS6 compliant and are now left with Jeep 2.0 MJD for premium cars. Tata Motors now has to play catch up with Mahindra in engine department to power their premium offerings - Harrier, Safari and upcoming Sierra.
Tata also has a bad reputation of discontinuing car brands and platforms. For example, Omega Arc platform was launched 4-5 years back and Tata has only Harrier and Safari on this platform. Curvv went on new platform.
Curvv ICE is not available for test drive about 1 month since launch. Harrier and Safari sold close to 50 units each in September 2024 in Telangana as per data published by Telangana RTO.

[Mystic]

Anand Mahindra said that the Scorpio was a "trusty warhorse" that had always been at his side. He said that if the Scorpio had flopped, the board would have fired him.

By chance after my relocation to India in 2009, I bought the Scorpio VLX. I was very impressed by their bullet proof m hawk engine which also happened to be introduced in 2009. I personally feel that this is the turning point for Mahindra and there is no looking back.

[anuragsingh]

What is also impressive is that Mahindra's export numbers have also increased. Mahindra is very serious about establishing itself as a global brand now.

[Skorp_Knight]

This Decline in Tata's sales has more to do with their reputation of late of having too many glitches and niggles in their cars. Every review channel is now talking about it, some being way too vocal about it to the point of Tata denying sending review cars to them. Here too on TeamBHP, threads are filled with complaints about things going wrong every once in a while.

Now their old habits have started to bite them back once again, they found a lot of success in the last 5 years for their hard work in the Design and features departments, and Tata cars are in my opinion some of the more desirable ones to own in their respective segments. But desires die down fast once the reliability issues slap you in the face, and in a country like ours, word of mouth spreads faster than fire. They need to wake up before their attitude eats them up again, as the excuse of being the safest manufacturer won't go far with others starting to catch up.

[Elevate2024]

Originally Posted by Skorp_Knight

This Decline in Tata's sales has more to do with their reputation of late of having too many glitches and niggles in their cars.

I was always surprised by the sales numbers of Tata despite their reputation of glitches and niggles along with their after sales services. It's a problem which has been highlighted to their management by both customers and reviewers and yet they never paid any heed. In one of the podcast of Motorinc first, Karthikeya mentioned, Tata cars are consistent in their niggles and glitches and when he pointed it out to Tata's team, their response was, what's new, as in even the management has started to treat these issues as normal.

There are issues in Mahindra as well but they are improving and are taking the customer feedback to the extent the same reviewers mention they are better than before.

Hope Tata improves on this aspect majorly as when making a purchase I simply ruled out Tata cars on the sheer reputation of their poor sales services.

[lemedico]

I am certain Ford looked at M&M and announced that they would only make SUVs. What success! Cheers to the Mahindra men and women.
How about a chunky dividend for your shareholders then?

I would like to ask one thing, Tata/IHCL, ITC etc give incentive coupons and discounts for shareholder to utilise on their products or services. Why do the auto companies shy away from doing the same?

[TheStoryweaver]

Originally Posted by Skorp_Knight

This Decline in Tata's sales has more to do with their reputation of late of having too many glitches and niggles in their cars. Every review channel is now talking about it, some being way too vocal about it to the point of Tata denying sending review cars to them. Here too on TeamBHP, threads are filled with complaints about things going wrong every once in a while.

They need to wake up before their attitude eats them up again, as the excuse of being the safest manufacturer won't go far with others starting to catch up.

I completely agree with you on this. The lethargic attitude in fixing customer's problems and then letting it drag till it becomes widespread on social media is one of the major things I notice about the big cars Tata sells. Once or twice a month, I see breakdown stories of the Safari twins. (Saw one this morning as well.)

As per my research and analysis, the cars designed from ground up (Nexon, Punch, Altroz) are better built than the Safari twins (borrowed architecture from JLR).

In the future, many Nexon and Punch buyers will seek to upgrade to bigger ones. If Tata doesn't fix its bigger car's reliability and after-sales service for all its passenger vehicles, they are bound to lose business in future.
Mahindra has worked hard on its engines and build quality. The majority of their in-demand cars are priced at 10-12 lac plus. I feel they are much better positioned than TATA in the SUV and crossover segments. Also, generating good revenue per car.

As per my analysis buyer is much more confident to spend 20 lacs on a Mahindra than compared to TATA. Similarly people are confident to recommend a Mahindra than a Tata for larger SUV's. Monthly vehicle stats tell the same story. It's a wake up call for TATA.

[V0id2003]

Kudos to Mahindra , releasing 1 banger after another. If they improve their quirky looking ugly designs then I am sure that sky is the limit

[It's Magic]

Originally Posted by volkman10

Mahindra loses out to Hyundai by a whisker, now is the Nr. 3 manufacturer in India.

Well done, Mahindra! Big achievement!

It's been a while since Mahindra has been progressing slowly and steadily towards the number 3 spot. Finally, they have overtaken Tata and got there. Tata has had a rough couple of months and is hoping to turn things around during the upcoming festive season.

Also, let's not draw conclusions based on just one month's sales. When Tata reached near Hyundai's numbers a few months back, a similar discussion happened that they would be number 2 now. But Hyundai continued to hold its number 2 position.

So, I think today we should just congratulate Mahindra on achieving more than 50,000 sales.

For the number 2 or number 3 spot, we need to see how this fight progresses over the next few months. For a definitive number 2 or 3, Mahindra has to maintain a substantial difference with the next competitor.

[gururajrv]

I'm so happy for Mahindra and they're steadfast in their approach with SUV being their major offering from their stable. They churn out healthy competition. Look at the words from Mr Anand Mahindra himself. Hope Tata and Mahindra tops the charts and overtake Hyundai and MS soon enough!

[Fravia]

Oh well, they could've well and truly have taken that #2 spot, had they delivered hundreds of bookings just in Bangalore waiting since May/June. It is shameful and unfair to have unspecified amount of waiting periods. I hope they change that soon.

[Ays7]

That Tweet from Mahindra is really classy. No disrespect towards a competitor but clear mutual respect. Well done to them. As someone said earlier, Tatas have their QC and niggles sorted for sub 20 Lakh cars but Harrier/Safari Twins do have a lot of niggles and issues that are unacceptable at that price range. Further the ASS still has that sarkari “chalta hai” attitude and is not trained to deal with a discerning or demanding customer who demands or asks too many questions. That will hurt them. I am also sure that when it comes to unit economics - profit per vehicle for Mahindra would also beat Tata by huge margin given so much of their sales are in 18-30 Lakh segment now. Mahindra has played the long game and are now seeing the rewards. Will be interesting to see once Thar numbers start adding up.

[PrasunBannerjee]

Excluding Safety as the common denominator, and considering a term of last 5-6 years, Tata has been a design-led company in its approach, and Mahindra has been an engineering-led company. Both had their own pros and cons.

Tata went on to provide stellar looking vehicles inside out, right from their cute Tiago to well rounded Punch, handsome Altroz to the good looking Nexon (gen-1 facelift seems the best in my taste), to the model on four wheels which is the Safari. (even the redesign from Aria to Hexa was a pretty good one!). They did take good inspiration from JLR whose design works have always been on point. This has helped Tata churn out a lot of great looking product line and become talking point in every car discussion. But then, nomatter how good their designs looked, lack of focus on QC and poor engines (having to borrow multijet, lackluster 3 pot engines in their lineup), allegedly horrible after sales service begin to rise their heads once the goodness of the designs and the talk of the safety factor made you buy the car, novelty fades away. Smart way to get the customer's foot in the door indeed!

Mahindra somehow realized design wasn't their feat. The drop dead gorgeous Nuvosport, KUV100, Quanto and the likes made them look for developing some other strong nerve, which is what laid foundation of their stellar engines, and not just in diesel. They focussed quite a lot to build their R&D, and then built products around it. This strategy didn't pay off initially perhaps, but I have a hunch 5 years from now Mahindra engines will be deemed at par with Koreans in terms of reliability if not the Japanese. Who knows they can be lending their engines to other global manufacturers in time to come, just like Fiat is doing currently. While all Mahindra designs are still not fully great yet (weirdly quirky 3X0), but newer models are palatable (thar and roxx are really mod friendly, your taste is the limit), or can 'forcefully' grow on you since you end up paying quite some money. Most people sell their cars within 3 years because of performance issues, niggles, etc. Very few people sell because they started disliking the looks.

Tata has to up its game. You canNOT brush some issues under the carpet while contesting for a prominent long term 2nd spot. At this scale and intense competition, every aspect matters. Design, QC, After sales, driving pleasure, fuel economy (no wonder kitna deti hai campaign has kept MS on the top along with many more reasons), customer satisfaction, etc.