There is a Mahindra tractor brochure that says something to that effect, but it is not true. Mahindra didn't even exist until October 2, 1945 (after WWII ended) when it was founded as a steel trading company. In 1947 Mahindra ordered 75 CKD ("Completely Knocked Down") CJ-2a Jeeps to be shipped from Toledo to India. They arived in 1949 and were assembled in Mumbai (then Bombay) by Mahindra with the first one rolling out of the Mahindra shop on June 3, 1949. Shortly after, Mahindra began importing/assembling CKD CJ3 Jeeps and it wasn't until a few years later that they began manufacturing some of their own parts. By the end of 1957, Mahindra had "indigenized" (begun manfacturing in India) 52% of the parts of the CJ-3b by parts value. But Mahindra did not manufacture any parts for Jeeps during WWII because the company didn't even exist until after the war.
This is a poor quality photo of that first CKD CJ-2a assembled by Mahindra:
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A few years ago I picked up this book, published in India, which covers the history of the company and details of many of the models they produced over the years. Some of the history I quoted above came from this book.
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Over the years Mahindra designed and built many variants to suit the needs of the Indian market that had nothing to do with models built by Jeep in the U.S. I've shown only a few of them in this thread so far and there are a lot more models I'll post as this thread continues.
Yesterday I posted photos and brochures for the Commander and Marshal. Mahindra made a slightly wider version of those called the Maxx. This photo shows the extra width:
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This next photo shows the width difference in the back; Commander on the left, Maxx on the right. You can see the extra width between the tail light and the barn door.
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The Maxx and a few other models came with a grille overlay that is seen in this next Maxx photo. The "classic" CJ grille is behind the overlay.
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The plastic overlay is broken on this one so you can see the classic grille:
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A few more:
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This next one is a first gen Thar, the grille (and the grille of most other "CJ-styled" Mahindra models) is 41" wide, which is 2" wider than the Jeep CJ grille and coincidentally 41" is the same width as the TJ grille. The photo also shows the extra width of the tub at the cowl, although this dimension is less than the same dimension on the wider Maxx.
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Maybe on one of my India trips this year I should bring a Mahindra grille home to try out on a TJ? It probably will fit with the TJ hood but it would require some adaptation at the fenders.
A photo just for you, this is the diesel in an MM540. Cute little thing, isn't it?
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The MM540 is a predecessor of the Thar and looks the same differing mostly in details. I'll cover the MM540 and many more models later in this thread.
