Unbelievably quick!

One look at the Terracan, its huge proportions and another at the weight, more than even the Pajero 3.2 and one could be forgiven for assuming that this is going to be one sluggish vehicle, with a big and hungry engine with good bottom end grunt to get the behemoth moving. Get behind the wheel and if the engine is already running you would start wondering if it is powered be a petrol V6 or a V8 instead of a four-pot diesel.

Put it into gear and the Terracan glides effortlessly, as a surge of power (nearly 0.6G) pushes you back in the seat. Remember to shift slightly before the engine redlines and your revs stay above the 1700rpm mark and you are carried forward in another tidal wave of power. Sounds good but it is more often than not that the figures reveal a different story.

But if I were to give the performance figures for the Terracan on a sheet of paper and forget to mention the vehicle’s name, most people would assume that we are talking about one of the mid-sized cars with a lot of bottom end grunt as the 100kmph mark comes up in less than 14 seconds - in the same 13s that it takes a Honda City to get to 100kmph. Quarter mile comes up in 19 and a half seconds while the kilometre mark is reached in 35.19s, a time identical to the time taken by the Pajero 3.2 to cover 1000m from a standing start.

But the best part of the Terracan is neither its quick start of the blocks or its long legs or even its top speed of 165.7kmph (again in mid-sized saloon category) but its roll on figures.

In fourth gear the average time for each 10kmph interval from 40kmph till 100kmph is less than 2.4s while in fifth gear the figure goes up to 3.6s. And to top it all when the rev counter gets up to the 2000rpm mark, there is a surge, in whichever gear the SUV might be in. In fifth gear the Terracan is in between 70 and 80kmph and so it records the best roll on time of 2.89s while in fourth gear the Terracan is between the 60 and 70kmph mark and therefore the best fourth gear roll on time of 2.13kmph.