We all know the XUV500: a stylish, softly sprung, diesel-engined, seven-seater. And it’s flying off the shelves for being stylish, softly sprung, diesel-engined and seating seven; attributes that should consign any notion of rallying to the rubbish bin. Okay, being good-looking is no drawback, but you get the drift – who rallies a 2.2-ton SUV that’s taller than the average Indian with a centre of gravity near his belly? Even by Indian motorsport standards, where we race and rally anything we can lay our hands on, a yumping, opposite-locking XUV500 is just wrong. The XUV has no pedigree; its platform is Mahindra’s first crack at a monocoque; it is natively front-wheel-drive; and Mahindra themselves have no rallying history save for the time Farad Bhathena won the Great Desert Himalaya Raid successively in 1988 and ’89 in a works Mahindra MM540.

And yet, at the first round of the 2013 INRC, the XUV wiped the floor clean, beating the best of the Cedias by over four-and-a-half minutes. That’s an eon in a championship where top drivers battle for fractions of a second in every stage.

Engine is standard save for a diesel tuning box and perofrmance air filter. Intercooler repositioned from top of the engine to the front, near the radiator, for better cooling hence the big red hose.