The 2007 Mahindra Scorpio is from an era of Indian vehicles that breached into the thought of customer luxuries and hopes of exporting to foreign markets. This can be seen through the inclusion of a Miles per Hour reading under the usual kilometres per hour reading in the speedometer. One tiny design change that possibly catered to Mahindra’s ambitions of export at the time may be the inclusion of a double din slot where the stereo would normally be. Even so, at launch, Mahindra only offered a single din stereo as was prevalent at the time. While today most every car seems to be connected to the internet and sometimes carries screens larger than their engine displacements, screens in a car in 2007 were a luxury reserved to the Mercedes and Audis of our little country. Not to disappoint any BMW owners, I just didn’t feel like including another name there.
My point being from all of the above is that, it is possible to install a touch-screen Android Auto/Apple Carplay system in our Scorpio. Of course, the monetary value of such a system has always been a deterrent. Now, I’m not a very politically informed or even a politically appropriate person BUT, china makes a lot of good cheap $h*t so I’m glad we haven’t broken out into war with them YET. What led me here was a system I found on Amazon India now that Ebay India is dead (Great job Flipkart. You’re doing great against Amazon aren’t you?). A 7 inch touch-screen HD (Yes, HD not FHD) Android 9 tablet jerry-rigged into a vehicle infotainment system. It comes with the Google Playstore! and supposedly, a 200W amplifier also coming with 2gigs of ram and 16gigs of internal storage. Not great stuff but enough to play Spotify and open Google Maps. All this comes with a custom “Car OS” android skin plastered on top that also lets you connect your phone wirelessly while offering two wired USB ports for any other connectivity. No Aux here, unfortunately.
Priced at INR6000, I could’ve paid my first advance on purchasing a Cow, which is clearly the superior purchase here but like all my decisions, I let my tech obsession get the better of me.
Coming to the actual product itself, it does a fairly decent job on audio considering the price. The amplifier option didn’t seem to do much except to make the music slightly louder. On the apps side of things, the system runs on an aging Mediatek quad core which makes the OS pretty sluggish, especially prevalent on google maps. Youtube and other video play just fine. The HD display is easily good enough considering that the ride will have you bouncing around most of the time. The digitiser being plastic is a slight con as the display gets scratched easily. On extended use, I have noticed that Google Maps occasionally crashes or freezes. The GPS module provided along with the set is not great, or good at all. You’ll mostly see your self veering off the road randomly on the map.
You would think after reading the above that the product gives you a half-baked sluggish experience but on the contrary, the product provides you with a certain feeling of fulfilment knowing that your 13 year old Land-Boat is now Bluetooth and Sat-Nav enabled with the ability to play videos and run android apps. I had a pleasant experience driving on the beautiful hill roads listening to the songs that would’ve otherwise misted up my head. The system does offer the ability to use Google Assistant and voice commands but mind you, the mic is unusable unless you bend down, bring your nose to the screen and then attempt to day whatever was on your mind. All this while driving.
Depending on what model of Scorpio you own, this shouldn’t be a problem. The system has almost universal compatibility with the steering controls, physical buttons and knobs of most cars, including the Mahindra Scorpio. Unfortunately, the Mahindra Scorpio didn’t come with steering controls until 2011. I contemplated swapping a later steering wheel onto our car but fate sent me spiralling to Scotland before I could do anything about that.
Coming to the actual installation of the system, our Scorpio had an older connector as compared to the product which is more compatible with newer vehicles (post 2010 probably). This wasn’t an issue as the electrical pinout was pretty much the same and a trip to the local workshop amidst the pandemic fixed that pretty soon. Ooty literally has only one dude who knows enough to do the wiring on these cars and his customers get queued up for days. After waiting outside for a while watching several ambulances skeeter around carrying around some “Covid patients” whatever that was about, we finally got the wiring done. The fitment into the dash was job shared by my dad, myself and our driver. In this “Do not try this at home” stunt, I manned an angle grinder while our driver acted as a workbench holding a piece of metal while my dad operated a generator because of course, there was a power-cut. After than incredibly dangerous and thrilling operation, we installed the unit into the double din space in the Scorpio’s Dash along with the included frame. After a few hours of fiddling adding google accounts, setting up internet and what-not, we were done!
Conclusion
In conclusion, I’ve now converted my old Pioneer CD/DVD audio player setup into a cheap shitty feeling android tablet. In one of the larger trips I’ve done in 2020, a 1100KM round-trip split into two 11 hour driving sessions, I did not actively resent the system. The GPS accuracy was a joke and google maps crashed periodically but, I was glad I had a Bluetooth connected system that could play whatever I wanted. This was especially useful in those intense moments where I was tempted to run some idiots off the road. As for the actual satellite navigation, I just used my phone mounted to a holder on the rear-view mirror. Just the ability to have some nice music playing from Spotify or wherever, transformed the already beautiful drives through forests and small roads, across the hills through day and night. Whether the Mahindra was on a highway or on a country road, day or night, paved or unpaved or straight up rocks, the unit served me and my passenger well, just as the Mahindra has.
