BHPian APB98 recently shared this with other enthusiasts:Test Drive Impressions: Visually, the car looked impressively wide. It does look big from the outside. However I don’t know why Mahindra are showcasing the orange color so much. That’s by far the worst looking color on the BE6 for me (I know it’s subjective, but I preferred to inspect other colours for a better understanding of the dimensions) The ground clearance felt huge, so much so that I felt I had to raise my feet a long way to get in and out of the car, from both the front and rear. Boot space seemed pretty good, but the parcel tray felt a nuisance. I asked it to be removed to get a better understanding of the volume. Front seats felt nice enough to begin with, but I felt like I was sitting at a very low height. This made me a bit apprehensive about the driver seat position to begin with (even after electrically adjusting it), but things changed for the good once I started driving, which I’ll come to later. The interiors looked decent, the screens were brilliant. Now coming to the BIGGEST DRAWBACK : Unsurprisingly, the REAR SEATS It is really worthless. The entire angle of the recline, length of the under thigh base are so awkward and misaligned that sitting on it felt like sitting on a roller coaster ! These strange angles meant that although there was sufficient width for 3, decent headroom and a kneeroom which was just about acceptable, there is practically ZERO under thigh support. My parents sitting at the back did not feel comfortable. To put our disappointment into perspective, the rear seats of our 10 year old Ecosport felt upmarket and luxurious after seating at the rear of BE6. On top of that, didn’t anyone feel that the middle seat was too hard ? The person sitting in the middle might find it an even tougher ride. After the physical inspections, decided to take it for a 15 minute TD. The circuit included some bad roads, narrow roads, bumpy roads and main city roads with moderate to heavy traffic. It has to be said, the driving and handling of this car is just magnificent ! I felt in love with it the minute I pressed the accelerator by 30%. The suspensions felt a bit stiff to begin with, but then felt like they adjusted pretty well. The torque is tremendous! Steering also felt superb, and perfectly calibrated to provide great feedback. As a guy with near zero experience in even automatics (forget EVs), this one really made me curse my ICE manuals ! It was that good. That’s what make tears roll out of my eyes (literally). If only the rear seats were atleast decent !! The current rear seats are a real compromise, and practically make it unfit for a family like mine (4 adults) to enjoy long drives. It also baffles me as to why Mahindra decided to make the rear seats so inconvenient for such a high potential vehicle. Yes it’s being marketed as a kind of a sports car, but Indians always consider their families ! It’s not that providing better rear seats would have reduced the attractiveness of the XEV 9Es (they look splendid btw !!). I believe that the BE6 sales numbers would have been 3x more if the rear seats were done even 30% better than what has been currently kept. I am not a mechanical person and hence I don’t know if Mahindra has achieved something by reducing the seat base and keeping such an odd recline angle. Anyways, this one issue has meant that the BE6 is less viable for me now. My parents (who would usually sit at the rear) definitely did not like the rear seats, and a compromise for such a basic thing at this cost (which is not small even if it’s the base variant) doesn’t seem to be practical at all. This is when it hurts, because this is probably more fun to drive than any other ICE car I have driven till date ! Need to TD the XEV 9e sometime later and see how better it is. It feels like a different league from the BE6 due to its massive space and seating comfort.Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.
