Thar vs Jimny: The Bear and the Tortoise!
Seldom in history do you find two cars this similar in intent and yet this different in execution. The Mahindra Thar is the personification of badass. This is how big bad American off-roaders are made. The unmistakable Jeep styling, the tall stance, the bulging wheel arches, the huge 18 inch wheels and two very, very powerful engine options that make the Thar not only badass but extremely capable both on and off-road. The Jimny, on the other hand, is the personification of minimalism. It's a hermit who carries all his essential belongings with him in a small bundle of cloth. Small body, small tyres, small engine and two decade old gearboxes. All of this to ensure the car remains light on its feet and lives up to the "mountain goat" tag that its predecessor in India, the Gypsy had earned for itself. In fact, so obsessed were Suzuki engineers with weight savings that they decided to even do away with essentials like bottle holders and cubby holes! Is this even a fair comparison then? Well, yes and no. Given how close these cars are priced and the terrains for which these cars have been developed, it's a fair comparison. However, when you bring in other aspects like practicality and every day liveability, you begin to realise just how different the target audience for each of these cars is and how each one creates that niche for itself. So let's get started.
Straight off the bat, lets get pricing out of the way. If you have to compare the price of a Jimny, a fair comparison would be with that of an off-road capable car that has four doors and a boot. The current Thar has neither (the boot is a joke). The upcoming 5 door Thar should cost at least 3 to 4 lakhs more than the current Jimny, addressing a whole new price segment altogether. As you can see, the current Thar and the current Jimny DO NOT sit in the same segment. So anyone comparing the two based on their specsheets alone and concluding that the Jimny is "overpriced" is living under a rock.
Moving on to what made the Thar this popular in India in the first place: the road presence! With the Jimny and the Thar standing side by side, the difference in size is not just obvious, it is hilarious! The Thar is all about how gabru, how macho it makes the driver feel. You sit high up in the Thar and get that king of the road commanding view of the road ahead. You quite literally have to look down upon other cars as you roll past them with swag. The tashan, the taur and the rutba are just next level. If you live in North India and don't own a Thar, you have not arrived in life yet. Period. The Jimny on the other hand, is all about cuteness and freshness. Just look at it! Like a little labrador puppy, wagging its tail with glee on seeing you, ever read to play. It genuinely, genuinely plants a smile on your face each time you look at it, sit in it or take it out for a spin. It's just a happy car. You wanna play? Take the Jimny. You wanna bully? Take the Thar. Either ways, you will not be disappointed.
Time for some practicality showdown. As said before, the two extra doors and a very usable boot, change the game completely in favour of the Jimny when it comes to practicality. Sure it does not get the cabin width or enough storage spaces in the cabin but when it comes to buying just one car for the family, it has to be the Jimny. The Jimny moves meaningfully ahead when it comes to features as well. I'm not talking about headlamp washers here, which are welcome but not essential. It's basics like climate control, keyless go, push button start, sound quality of the music system, wireless Android Auto and Apple Car Play, bright LED lights and six airbags as standard that gives confidence to even a compact SUV buyer to consider the Jimny instead. Moreover, the quality of the switchgear and the overall cabin fit and finish feel cheap in the Thar. The Jimny definitely feels more solidly built in this regard. When it comes to practicality, the Jimny takes the round with one hand tied behind.
Lets move on to performance now. Both the diesel MHawk as well as the petrol MStallion engines of the Thar are significantly more powerful than the K15B mill in the Jimny. Moreover, you get a much better 6 speed automatic gearbox in the Thar as against the 4 speed one in the Jimny. No, I am not comparing the specs on paper and giving a verdict. Jimny's 4 speed auto is genuinely slow to shift and just not mated well to the engine, especially in the mid to high revs. With the manual gearboxes too, the Thar gets an extra 6th gear as compared to the Jimny's 5 speed gearbox with short ratios. The Thar would thus be a lot more relaxed maintaining legal triple digit speeds on highways as compared to the Jimny as far as the engines and gearboxes are concerned. The Jimny would sit happily at 100 kph too but encounter some traffic that slows you down to say a 60 kph and the Jimny will take forever to get you back to the comfortable 100. Add inclines to the equation and you wish you had a Hawk or a Stallion under the hood, rather than a solitary alphabet K. Even while doing off-roading, the extra torque in the Thar is always welcome. Aah yes! The signal to signal drag races? Well, you are not winning any of those if you're in a Jimny. Not even against hatchbacks.
What about the ride, you may ask? Well that's where the Jimny looks at the Thar in the eye and says "Aao Thakur. Main jaanta tha tum jaroor aoge!" If there's one department where the Suzuki engineers have absolutely nailed it, it's the ride quality. The ride is absorbent like you expect in a ladder frame vehicle and yet, the body roll is extremely well contained. That's where the lightweight of the Jimny really shines through. With a lighter body, one needs to keep lower compression on the springs to hold the body up in place. That also results in lower rebound levels when going through bad patches or undulations in the road. Remember when I said the engines in the Thar can comfortably keep you at legal triple digit speeds? The corollary is, the chassis and the suspension set up, can't handle those speeds. The Thar feels unstable at anything around or over a 100 kph and that's where you feel Mahindra have wasted all those extra horses and birds on offer under their hoods. The Jimny feels a lot more car like at and around the 100 kph and gentle change of lanes at those speeds can be done with a lot more confidence in the Jimny than in the Thar. The Jimny goes not one but two up on the Thar in this department.
Time to conclude. Both the Thar and the Jimny take different approaches to off-roading. While the Thar goes for more brute force, the Jimny prefers being light on its feet and getting the job done. It is however on the road that the two cars behave very differently. The longer wheelbase and the lighter footprint of the Jimny give it superb ride quality and stability out on the highways while the ride in the Thar can get a little bouncy and unnerving at higher speeds. Which one should you buy depends more upon you than the cars themselves. If you already have a primary car or cars in your garage for those long distance trips, a Thar can make a great everyday city car and an excellent toy to get dirty with the boys over weekends. The Jimny just cannot live up to the road presence and the performance offered by the Thar. However, if it's only one car that you can afford and you have now been bitten by the adventure bug, go with the Jimny and it will do all your nuclear family duties just fine. It will still get you your weekend fun, it will still take you places you never knew existed and more than anything else, it will still plant a big wide smile on your face every time you take it out for a spin. So if you're in the market to buy a feature rich, front wheel driven pseudo SUV with voice commands, cooled seats, air purifier and Internet Inside, think again. It's cars like the Thar and the Jimny that put the S in an SUV. The least they deserve from you is a test drive and you never know, one of them might just win you over.
Thar or Jimny? You drive, you decide!
Happy miles!
