Wither Mahindra, Goodbye MahindraPlanet

The End

I've been putting off writing a final post to kind of close out MahindraPlanet for a month now.  Obviously, Mahindra has decided to bail out on their often promised commitment to manufacturing and selling a compact diesel pickup truck for the United States.

I was writing a long overdue response back to Pee Wee from MahindraTruckForum.com today and realized that what I was writing really summed up my personal thoughts on the Mahindra debacle.  So I am publishing the slightly edited version of that response:

Hi Pee Wee,

Interest in Mahindra and MahindraPlanet certainly has waned in the last several months.  Yes, I did read all about their announcement back when you posted it up on MTF.  Frankly, I was too disgusted to post anything at the time. 

I would say that in a nutshell, I have moved on as well.  My interest in MahindraPlanet is barely there anymore, and I am completely disappointed in how everything transpired.  My heart certainly isn't into maintaining the blog like it once was.  I have heard absolutely nothing from John Perez so I am assuming that he is pretty well devastated by the news.  Certainly those dealers are all going to recoup anything they can from him or Mahindra.  I feel for the dealers more than anyone else. 

I really need to put together a final post to kind of close the site down and finish four years of blogging about Mahindra.  I certainly owe that to the awesome people I have met over that time.  The whole story is pretty silly in retrospect and I hope that in some way Mahindra's epic failure to launch a highway vehicle in the US has at least put a slight ding in their humongous egos. 

That said, I bet Mahindra will try again.  But I bet that they will do it withSsangyong and they will do it all a lot differently.  Since I have no interest inSsangyong or even the unitized Mahindra XUV500 (and the fact that they totallyburned every single person they dealt with in the US), I don't see the point incontinuing to support them. 

Like many other people, I was probably more in love with the concept of abare-bones, heavy-duty but compact, diesel pickup.  Unfortunately it was only ever a concept and never a reality that Mahindra could actually deliver.

Take Care!Chris

With that said, MahindraPlanet will continue to live on the web as long as Google leaves it here.  I might or might not update it once in a while.  We shall see.

I do want to thank every single person who has supported the website over the years.  I even want to thank the haters and trolls who really added character to the comments and kept me in check.  I learned a hell of a lot about writing, blogging, and annoying the hell out of people.  All in all, I had an awesome time and I hope that many of you did too.

Anyway.  Take care, and see you somewhere else!

Chris

Brief Mahindra Updates

We have new posts coming soon as we transition a  new website with a new name: MahindraTruckNews.com (more on that later). For now, here are some recent articles which describe the current state of Mahindra vehicles in the US:

1: Mahindra & Mahindra's American Speed Bump - A great Forbes India article posted today which provides a detailed profile of John Perez, Anand Mahindra, and Pawan Goenka.

2: U.S. Car Dealers Claim Mahindra Rolled Them - A detailed article on the current litigation Mahindra faces from US dealers that have been boned by the failed Mahindra TR20/TR40 program.

3: Why Mahindra's Pick Up Truck Foray in the US Failed - Another great article from Forbes India which provides a tidy timeline and history of all that has transpired in the last eight years of Mahindra's US adventure. Thanks to Pee Wee from MahindraTruckForum for this one!

2014 Now Possible Date for New Mahindra Pickup

Edmunds is reporting that Mahindra is working on a completely revised Mahindra pickup which will possibly come to the US. Anyone else still holding their breath?

http://www.insideline.com/mahindra/scorpio/mahindra-developing-future-scorpio-in-india.html