Xylo on Jan 13

Automotive major Mahindra and Mahindra’s much-anticipated Xylo, earlier codenamed Ingenio, will debut on the 13th of January. Mahindra has said it has started production of the Xylo as scheduled. The company plans to open customer bookings for its latest offering by January 14, 2009.

The Mahindra Xylo is being made at Mahindras’ state-of-the-art facility at Nashik in Maharashtra. The production of the Xylo has been kick started after extensive road tests and the MUV is likely to be available in a phased manner across M&M dealerships.

In the Indian auto market, the Xylo will compete against the Toyota Innova which rules the MUV segment. In fact, frommost angles, the Xylo looks like the Innova.

Dubbed as a very special vehicle for Mahindra which could go on to acquire an iconic status in the Indian automotive scene, the Xylo is being built taking into consideration the feedback of its customers.  Expected to be positioned in the same plane as the company’s current bestsellers such as the Bolero and the Scorpio, the MUV will come in multiple variants and will initially have a diesel engine (2.5 litre CRDi) followed by a petrol engine (co-developed by AVL) and an automatic transmission variant, M&M has said.

Likely to come with a price tag of around Rs 8 lakh, the Xylo will give competition to proven models from competitors, the Toyota Innova. Mahindra is currently the market leader in multi-utility vehicles in India and had recently made a splash in the passenger car segment with the Logan.

Though the Xylo is the latest from the Mahindras’ assembly line, the company is said to constantly looking to launch more products. The company, basically a mid-segment player, is planning to launch a premium SUV, which has been codenamed W201, by year 2009.  The company had also made an entry recently in the two-wheeler segment which will see the company emerge as a full-range player with a presence in almost every segment of the automobile industry, sources said.