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Experiencing beautiful Cape Town in Mahindra XUV700 and Scorpio N

8th October 2023, 13:47 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

It was a part of the Mahindra Futurescape event where the company showcased the Thar.e Vision and the Global Pik Up.

BHPian CrAzY dRiVeR recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Tradition - The word that comes to my mind when I think of Mahindra and Independence Day! It all started with the Thar launch on the 15th of August 2020, during Covid times, everyone was confined to the idiot boxes. Followed by the XUV 7OO in 2021 and Scorpio N in 2022 - watching a Mahindra unveil had become part of the Independence Day holiday experience. But all of it only on the big screen!

Milking the 'Make in India' narrative and sentiments? Maybe so, but all three of these products did make our markets sit up and take notice. The waiting periods are proof enough! All three made me want one too - the Thar for its looks and capabilities, the XUV 7OO for its superb feature list and drivetrain combinations and the Scorpio because nothing else would do! So, when GTO passed on this opportunity to attend the Mahindra Independence Day event this year - I signed up, hoping to be one of the first to experience the Thar 5-door!

Well, as we all know by now - that did not happen! Instead, the event this year was called the "Mahindra Futurescape" - an attempt at showcasing the bold future of Mahindra farm and automotive divisions. The event was held in Cape Town, South Africa for two reasons - 1. South Africa is an important market for Mahindra's global aspirations and 2. The Independence Day connections - As Mahatma Gandhi once said - “I was born in India but was made in South Africa” and Mahindra wanted to showcase their new calling from this land. There were two product unveils from the automotive side - the Thar.e Vision and the Mahindra Global Pik Up.

Both these products were prototypes though! The drive experience was with two regular Mahindra cars - the XUV 7OO and the ScorpioN. The agenda was fairly simple - take the cars for an entire day and experience Cape Town and some of its attractions. The rules were also simple - Drive safe and experience the competencies of these Mahindra cars in a global setting and that lunch would be arranged at Cape Point and you get to avail it if you visited during lunch hours. The cars were to be handed over to us in the morning by 8am and returned by 7pm - a good 11 hours at our disposal. Thank you, Mahindra for making it so simple!

The route that we ended up taking for these 12 hours - Onward in the XUV 7OO to Cape Point and return in the ScorpioN:

PS: A big shoutout to Deep Majumdar from Business World for being such a wonderful drive companion, photographer and above all - a safe driver!

Disclaimer: Mahindra invited Team-BHP for the Futurescape drive in Cape Town, South

Cape Town is a very beautiful city, and has stunning landscapes surrounding it - I had realized as much when the Ethiopian Airlines flight started descending below the clouds. Since the logistics would be handled by PR, I did zero research and watched no vlogs before landing up! Needless to say - Cape Town was nothing like my expectations and far exceeded them. That said, the drive experience was going to change my perceptions even more...

After a quick breakfast and drive briefing, we had a small photo session before heading out to the parking lot.

Full credit to Mahindra where due - they had a very large fleet of cars present for the drive, parked in the basement of a nearby convention center. My initial allotment was going to be the XUV 7OO AX7L in Red Rage colour. We quickly made our way to the cars and proceeded for the flag off!

Flag off was held in batches and thankfully we were in Batch 1. However, the timelines were slowly delayed by an hour and we were out on the roads only by 9AM.

Heading out of the city was a slow affair, but not as chaotic as our Indian cities could be! Traffic was manageable and flowing most of the time and above all - people followed road rules. We were soon out on the beautiful M6 coastal highway, heading towards Chapman's Peak

Presenting our morning drive companion, the Red Rage Mahindra XUV 7OO AX7L

This coastal drive towards Chapman's Peak has incredible scenery on offer and multiple viewpoints where you would want to stop every other minute! Clean blue skies, deep blue waters and beautiful green scape - a beautiful day to be out on a drive. Moreover - the temperatures remained very pleasant throughout the day - slightly hovering around 20 degrees.

With the XUV 5OO, Mahindra had claimed that the colours were chosen to feel good in natural environs. Not sure if any such claims were made for the 7OO, but this Red Rage colour did stand out in this South African landscape

In South Africa, the car comes featured with the 2.0 Turbo petrol that produces 149KW (199hp) and 380Nm, only mated to an automatic transmission. This combination proved potent to keep up with the traffic at all times and also derive some excitement out on the open roads.

We stopped at a viewpoint a couple of minutes ahead of Chapman's peak without realizing the same. The views all around are just stunning!

The view from Chapman's Peak:

South Africa seemed to have a very large divide between the rich and the poor - with the middle class not as prominent as we see in India. It is common to find people requesting alms and also street vendors for multiple items. This one guy had beautifully arranged his collectables for tourists on the side walls of Chapman's Peak, one of the only moments where I wished I was carrying some local currency on the drive!

This road features on many lists as one of the most beautiful coastal road experiences in the world. The road, locally known as “Chappies”, is also claimed to be a popular destination for international car ad campaigns, from the likes of Mercedes and BMW.

The scenic drive "Hewn out of the face of sheer mountains" seems true here:

Back in the 7OO to the next destination:

The cars slowly headed down the winding roads into Kommetjie.

One corner suddenly opens up this landscape view and my jaw drops! The pictures don't do justice, but this was one of the most surreal landscapes I have ever seen and it just suddenly appears into view, post a corner. To top it all - there were horses running on the beach then, gone by the time we found parking and doubled back. If you zoom in, you can see the ranch nearby! Even the house looked right out of a smurfs movie!

The blue of the trapped water body contrasted well with the blue in the sky and of the ocean. The sands were clean and white! Man, what a landscape - and what a shame the photographs can't capture the beauty of what I felt in person!