Iam all for the automatic Scorpio. I know it’s kind of jumping the gun, but there is a reason for it. If you have driven the manual Scorpio and keep your left hand on the gear lever – let’s say while idling – the vibes that emerge from the lever can eventually disengage your arm from the socket. That too, accompanied by a vibrating sound that’s nothing but your wristwatch trembling in fear. Now that does not happen in the new Scorpio 2.2 mHawk Automatic. Now you get what I mean? Of course, that’s not reason enough to arrive at a decision on a car. Still, that’s round one for the new Scorpio variant. Initially – even before getting behind the wheel – I thought that the automatic gearbox was completely needless, and would sap away the driveability of the mHawk. But I was in for a surprise.
You see, the 2.2 mHawk engine is quite a rorty power unit. With 120 bhp at 4000 rpm and 29.6 kgm of maximum torque developing between 1800 and 2800 rpm, it has quite an amount of oomph to propel the big SUV. Sure, Mahindra engineers are confident it can make more power, but for our applications, this was deemed enough (Psst, this new automatic gearbox can handle up to 34 kgm of torque). With a manual transmission, the mHawk is quite at home both in the city as well as on the highway. In second gear for instance, it feels it will last till kingdom come. Now with an automatic, that too, a six-speed unit, the Scorpio mHawk’s nature has become even more friendly. With six gears to apportion the engine’s output, the Scorpio Automatic is actually a better machine to drive. Yup.
Though the tall gear lever takes some time to get used to and there is no indication in the instrument panel that tells you which gear mode you are in, it doesn’t affect proceedings. That’s because your left hand will develop enough ghost memory to shift without P, R, N, D or M flashing on the console. The reason why there is no display is because it has something to do with a unique CAN communication isolated to just the engine and the transmission. And according to Mahindra engineers, the cluster is not yet ‘CAN enabled.’ Anyway, it will be introduced in some time.
|
