It’s a busy weekend for Mahindra & Mahindra, which has announced plans to deliver 500 units of the recently launched new Thar SUV over today and tomorrow (November 7 and 8).

As is known, the company has received a robust market response to the new Thar and has over 20,000 bookings in hand. As a result, the waiting period for the snazzy SUV has shot up to six months and M&M is ramping up capacity at its Nashik plant by 50 percent – from 2,000 units to 3,000 units a month. According to the company, the waiting period ranges between 5 to 7 months, on select variants. The variants that are seeing maximum demand are the Hard Top Automatic and Manual (both in diesel and petrol options).

A sub-Rs 10 lakh starting price has helped the new Thar attract a whole new section of customers. The 2020 Mahindra Thar’s price range starts at Rs 980,000 for the base AX petrol-manual and tops out at Rs 13.75 lakh for the fully-loaded LX diesel-automatic (all prices, ex-showroom).

According to M&M, there has been an “overwhelming response from across all regions. The deliveries are based on the sequence of bookings received for the variants that are available.”

Veejay Nakra, CEO – Automotive Division, Mahindra & Mahindra, said: “We are delighted to mark the onset of Diwali festivities by delivering 500 new Thars across the country. As we kick-start our deliveries, I would like to assure our customers of a timely and seamless delivery, going forward.”

The company says it “has put in place a robust customer connect process to reach out to every customer individually and communicate their likely/exact delivery dates, thereby assuring them of their delivery schedule at every step of the waiting period.”