Mahindra is an automotive brand which is not exactly 'world renowned' for its two-wheelers. However, this has not stopped the Indian company from coming up with handsome looking, Mahindra Mojo, a touring motorcycle, says MotorBeam.
MotorBeam decided to add the motorcycle to their long term fleet in order to test out the real 'mojo' of the touring bike.
Mahindra as an automaker is primarily known for its utility vehicles. Thus their offerings often go largely un-noticed by the general crowd. Therefore, in order to change this, Mahindra decided to step into a daring and frankly niche segment of sports touring motorbikes in India and launched the Mojo motorcycle. So, obviously excited, we decided to add the Mahindra Mojo to our long term fleet to understand how well does it perform in different riding conditions.
Mahindra has designed the Mojo to be a world-class product, and looks like the motorbike satisfies that requirement in a fairly decent manner. In typical Mahindra fashion, the design of the bike leads to polarising opinions with some people liking the design and others loathing it. That said, the dual headlamps with DRLs ensure people give way to you while the twin silencers make people turn their heads.
The riding position is perfect for touring as well as commuting, as the basics are all in the right place -- such as the seat height which is just right for people of most heights, the handlebar which falls straight to the hand and the centre set footpegs which ensure that you sit completely upright. For a sports tourer though, the seat, while comfortable for the rider for short journeys, is slightly uncomfortable over longer rides. The pillion seat however leaves a lot to be desired.
In the ride and handling department, the touring ergonomics mean commuting within the city is a breeze and once you get used to the heavy front-end, splitting through traffic is easy. However, call it a design flaw or what, hard leaning into a corner is not what the bike excels at -- as the silencer bend pipe cover scrapes before the footpegs do. Though the bike is fairly confident of greater lean angles and the Pirelli tyres ensure you have utmost level of grip in all conditions.
The Mahindra Mojo is powered by a 295cc single-cylinder engine which produces 28 BHP of power and 30 Nm of torque. This power rating might look low for a bike of this segment, but the torque more than makes up for it. The mid-range is punchy and the low range is also not very bad. In the sixth gear, the bike is at a speed of 110 km/hr at 6000 RPM which makes overtaking a breeze as the torque is present at the twist of the throttle.
On the other end of the spectrum, the anchors which help bringing the bike to standstill are a troubled lot. The lack of feel from the front brake and the extreme bite of the rear brake do grave injustice to the two-wheeler which is a great overall package. With around 4000 kms on the odometer, the brake pads seemed to have become hard and the stopping power further reduced.
The redeemer here is definitely the exhaust system. The first thing we did was removed the dB killers to experience the sound and holy earth the exhaust sounded loud!
The Mahindra Mojo is probably tuned to eke out every inch of performance from its engine, which in turn hits the fuel economy figures hard. In varied riding conditions, the fuel efficiency has been in the range of 18 km/l to 27 km/l figures. This situation forced us to quieten up the exhaust by reinstalling the dB killers to improve fuel efficiency numbers.
Thus considering all aspects, the Mahindra Mojo does make a strong case for itself in which it attempts to cater to a niche segment of buyers who prefer buying a refined motorcycle for touring but do not wish to spend big bucks. We do acknowledge the fact that the bike still comes with a few rough edges, but like all Mahindra products, we do wish that the company improves over the faults of the product when the ABS equipped version comes out later this year.
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