Saar: It will go on sale in India on September 3, 2018.

The build-up to the Mahindra Marazzo’s official launch, which is scheduled for September 3, 2018, has been full of teasers. The story started when Mahindra officially announced that its latest three-row MPV, which was codenamed as U321, will be called the Marazzo. Apart from revealing the name, the company released snippets of the people carrier’s kit. Later, the company also released pictures of the Marazzo’s dashboard and seating layout. In the latest of them all, the homegrown automaker has focused on the headlamp enclosures of the MPV.

The headlamp design isn’t too busy. And that is a rare trait to find. It has a dual-barrel layout, with projector units on the outer unit and conventional reflector-type in the inner one. Accompanying them are two sweptback, horizontal light casings, with LED DRLs in the one above and, indicators and parking lights in the one below. As a first, Mahindra might ditch the traditional halogen bulbs in favour of a complete LED pack for the Marazzo’s headlamps. We’ve already seen the design of the taillamp enclosures. They seem to carry a combination of standard bulbs and LED elements in their configuration.

The Mahindra Marazzo is built on an all-new platform and is the first Indian car to have a pinch of Pininfarina design magic in it. Mahindra claims the Marazzo’s design has been inspired from that of a shark. The MPV, which will be sold in seven- and eight-seat configurations, is also the first product that has been developed and engineered through a collaboration between Mahindra Research Valley in Chennai and Mahindra North America Technical Centre. The company confirmed that the Marazzo will have the largest footprint (wheelbase x front track) of any Mahindra passenger vehicle currently on sale.

Mahindra is also expected to debut a new 1.5-litre diesel engine with the Marazzo. The official specs haven’t surfaced. However, reports suggest that mill could produce around 120PS of power and 300Nm of torque. While the power figure is at par with the 2.2-litre mHAWK diesel mill that does duty in the S5 and S7 (120PS) variants of the Scorpio, the torque is 20Nm higher. The new engine will be offered with manual and automatic transmissions and the released image of the instrument cluster confirmed that the range-topper will also be available with four-wheel-drive.

The Marazzo is tipped to unsettle the dominance of the Toyota Innova Crysta in the MPV segment. That means it will be a more premium offering than the ageing Xylo and will be placed above it. Prices for the Marazzo are expected to hover in the range of Rs 10-15 lakh.