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.
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.
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
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
