New Head Of Design At Mahindra And His First Project

Mahindra emblem on grille

The Mahindra XUV900 will be designed by the iconic Pratap Bose

We have big news and even bigger news coming out of Mahindra. The big news is the proposed launch of the Mahindra XUV900 somewhere between 2024 and ’27, most likely the first of the carmaker’s SUVs to be designed by Pratap Bose. The bigger news is Pratap Bose’s very recent appointment as the main designer at Mahindra (Executive Vice President and Chief Design Officer).

Ok, so the big news. The XUV900 is part of Mahindra’s push to launch 23 new passenger and commercial products, nine of which will be Mahindra SUVs.

The Mahindra XUV900 will be based on the XUV Aero concept which was shown at the 2016 Auto Expo, so it will be an SUV Coupe, Mahindra’s first vehicle to feature this new segment and the first SUV Coupe designed and built in India. The XUV900 will be a step up from the soon to be launched XUV700, while sharing the latter’s mStallion petrol and mHawk diesel engines, the six-speed manual and six-speed automatic gearboxes, and most likely some body panels. So the XUV900 sounds great, but it still has a way to go before we can drive it, so let’s move on.

The bigger news is Pratap Bose’s appointment to head up Mahindra’s design.

Who is Pratap Bose? Bose is one of the hottest auto designers in the world, a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London and the National Institute of Design in India. Of his more than 20 years of auto design experience, the past 14 were spent at Indian rival Tata Motors in the UK. Before that he worked at Piaggio in Italy and Daimler Chrysler, Japan.

What will Bose do? Well, he’ll be busy. Pratap Bose will run the recently announced Mahindra Advanced Design Europe (MADE) and Mahindra India Design Studio (MIDS). He will oversee design in all key business segments, including SUVs such as Born Electric Vehicles (SUVs designed from scratch as EVs), light and large commercial vehicles, last-mile mobility, and Peugeot Scooters (France). As if that is not enough, Bose will also oversee the design of all of Mahindra’s enormous range of tractors and farm machines.

In South Africa, we don’t get Mahindra’s Agri products yet, but don’t be surprised to see Pratap Bose designed vehicles on our Mahindra showroom floors one of these days. Maybe even the XUV900?


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