What the top of the range really costs

The top of the range is usually a different car underneath

This is the caveat that makes the rest of the page honest, so it comes before the tables rather than after them. A stretch is the distance one badge covers, and most of the time part of that distance is mechanical: on 116 of the 156 ranges the dearest variant has a different engine, a different gearbox or both from the cheapest one. Only 40 climb from floor to ceiling on the same powertrain, which is the only place the whole stretch really is trim and equipment. So read this as what a badge costs at each end, not as the price of features. The findings that isolate features are the trim step and the the automatic’s extra cost, and both hold the powertrain still to get there.

Some badges stretch much further than others

The typical range at Land Rover covers ₹20.00L from end to end; at BMW it covers ₹2.30L. Part of that is simply which cars a brand sells, since a bigger car has more room above it to charge for. Which is why the share matters more than the amount: measured against its own opening price, the steepest ladders belong to Tata, whose typical range asks 81% above the price it advertises. A long bar in the chart below means a brand prices its ranges inconsistently, whatever its typical range.

How far each brand’s ranges stretch from the advertised price to the top variant. The bar runs from that brand’s narrowest range to its widest, the orange mark is the typical range, and the figure beside it is how far it stretches. Free to republish with credit to VariantWise.

Where the ladder is longest

The typical SUV range covers ₹7.15L between its two ends, against ₹2.49L for the typical Hatchback. As a share of the opening price that is 39% against 47%, so it is not only that the cars cost more: the ladder itself is a longer climb. If you are shopping in the SUV class, the price that drew you in tells you less about what you will pay than it would anywhere else.

The two ends of the market

These are the 10 steepest ranges and the 10 tightest, by how far the top sits above the bottom. Both ends are here on purpose: a page showing only the steepest would be selecting for its own headline.

Where the middle of the ladder sits

A range can be wide and still cheap to shop, if most of its variants sit near the bottom. So beside every stretch is the middle variant: the price in the middle of what is on offer, placed between the two ends. Across the catalogue that middle sits 52% of the way up, and 92 of the 156 ranges are top-heavy, with their middle variant above the halfway mark. In plain terms, the typical range is very slightly weighted towards its dearer end: the cheap variants are not where most of the choice lives.

One thing this is NOT, and the distinction matters enough to say outright: it is the middle of the price list, not the middle of the buyers. We hold no sales data, so where the typical buyer actually lands is something we cannot compute, and a number here pretending otherwise would be the one figure on this page with nothing behind it.