One of the best off-road vehicles, the Force Gurkha, can finally be bought again! ‘Again’ because not many, save for the die-hard off-road fans, would know of the original Gurkha that was discontinued a few years back. ‘Finally’, because it has been promised since last year!
The next-gen (current) Gurkha was actually launched last year and MotorBash had brought to you an exhaustive Road Test Review of the new vehicle, but it never went on sale for reasons best known to Force Motors.
Later on the company officially announced that sales will begin from September 2014 which is also gone. We shot up a mail to the Force team, however, we are still awaiting a response from their side.
Meanwhile, the good news coming from Team-bhp is that the company has opened bookings of the Gurkha. At least a couple of people from Delhi and Chennai are confirming that their dealers are taking bookings and they also have the test drive vehicles with them.
The more interesting bit comes in the form of new changes the Gurkha is coming with. One of the member 4x4addict shares the following pic and reports that it comes with…
- Better gearbox
- Smaller steering wheel
- New designed dashboard
- Better AC vents and controls
- New place for tachometer
- New Gear knob
If you read our review, we have reported about all of these issues and Force had promised to work on them and it appears that at least at the upfront, changes have been made for good. Sometime towards the end of last year, we also snapped a Gurkha undergoing reduced NVH level testing which also means that there must be changes to the engine and other mechanical bits as well.
However, what is reported here is that Gurkha continues to be offered only with the BS3 engine option, the same OM616 2.6L motor which produces 82PS of power and 230Nm of torque. There doesn’t appear to be a BS4 variant on offer, from the initial reports.
While Force Motors plans to start deliveries in the next few weeks, you may want to read our test drive report (click above pic) to know about Gurkha’s off-road prowess, and a lot more, if you were planning to go snorkeling in the near future…
We are still awaiting a confirmation from Force on the list of changes the Gurkha has gone through. But these initial sneaks do suggest, all you 4×4 addicts, Gurkha is closer.. 🙂