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 96 of the 112 ranges the dearest variant has a different engine, a different gearbox or both from the cheapest one. Only 16 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 kit. The findings that isolate kit are the trim step and the gearbox premium, and both hold the powertrain still to get there.

Some badges stretch much further than others

The median range at Mahindra covers ₹7.68L from end to end; at MG it covers ₹2.76L. 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 Kia, whose median range asks 88% above the price it advertises. A long bar in the chart below means a brand prices its ranges inconsistently, whatever its median.

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 median, and the figure beside it is that median. Free to republish with credit to VariantWise.

Where the ladder is longest

The median SUV range covers ₹6.59L between its two ends, against ₹2.44L for the median Hatchback. As a share of the opening price that is 63% 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 median price of what is on offer, placed between the two ends. Across the catalogue that middle sits 53% of the way up, and 75 of the 112 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 median 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.