“We’ve tuned it to behave much better on road as well”

Prasan Firodia, MD, Force Motors, on the new Gurkha

“The styling, we like to keep it similar to the old Gurkha because we wanted to retain the old character and the DNA of the Gurkha line. Its new body is stronger and new interiors are now crash compliant. We’ve also taken care of the convenience features. The NVH levels are significantly lower. We’ve also tamed it and made it more road-friendly. While a Gurkha is probably the best in terms of purely a hardcore off-roader – I don’t think anything comes close to it – now we’ve tuned it to behave much better on road as well.

“We have spent about `50 to 70 crore on the project. It will also come with five doors. The current three-door now will go on sale by May.

“The peak firing pressures have gone up significantly, which meant that the engine characteristics have changed, meaning the engine block needed to be changed. The engine head had to be changed and this is a significantly new engine now.

“Power has gone down because again we are not making a high-speed SUV but an off-roader. This power will give you 120kmph. We have to make sure we strike the right balance between on road and off road. So what is more important is the torque produced.

“We have now close to about eleven hundred people in engineering because last four years we have added significantly more strength because we created three platform grounds up in-house. Of course we have used global domain experts for ride and handling and crash protection which is the norm for every OEM. But apart from that to keep the cost under control we have done significant engineering and we have built significant new R&D facilities in-house.

“The custom Gurkha is basically to show the consumers or aspirational Gurkha owners that you can buy a standard Gurkha and that you can make it into a monster.”