Isuzu mulling all-new pick up truck for India?

In the coming years, Japanese utility vehicle maker Isuzu could launch a product tailor made for the Indian market. A pick up truck that is engineered to suit Indian needs could be what Isuzu has in mind. Currently, details of the new Isuzu pick up truck remain sketchy at best.

In the India of today, pick up trucks remain confined to commercial uses such as goods transport and agriculture. The lifestyle pick up truck user is still a negligible market serviced by a handful of products such as the Tata Xenon XT 4X4, Mahindra Scorpio Getaway and the recently launched Isuzu D-Max Space Cab.

As disposable incomes grow and as more and more car buyers are looking at expedition vehicles for road trips, the lifestyle pick up truck segment could witness a boom. It is perhaps with this line of thought that Isuzu is mulling an India specific product, one that can rival the likes of the Xenon XT and the Scorpio Getaway.

The new pick up truck is likely to be priced above the D-Max but below the flagship MU-7 SUV. This positioning strongly points to a pick up truck for the lifestyle buyer segment. A pick up truck with four wheel drive, a powerful turbo diesel engine, a decent set of creature comforts and safety features, at a sharp price tag could be the push that the lifestyle segment needs and Isuzu is well placed to enter this segment come 2016.

Isuzu has just launched the D-Max range of pick up trucks in India. These pick up trucks will be CKD assembled at Hindustan Motors’ Tiruvallur factory, off Chennai. The CKD assembly arrangement that Isuzu has with Hindustan Motors is a stop gap arrangement at best, and is likely to go on until 2016.

The Japanese utility vehicle giant has begun constructing a greenfield manufacturing facility at Sri City,
situated at present day Andhra Pradesh. The factory, strategically located at the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh border seeks to make use of Chennai’s well developed Ennore port. The new factory will go on stream in 2016.

The new factory will be used as an export base for Isuzu and the company is expected to begin manufacturing the D-Max pick up truck range with a high amount of localization. The factory will have an annual capacity of 120,000 units.

Via AutocarPro