Tata prepares for new global pickup

Tata Motors is gearing up to compete in the fiercely competitive pickup market in Thailand. According to top industry sources, the company will launch a new one-tonne pickup called the Sprint scheduled to debut next year. It will be built in Rayong and compete against strong Japanese companies.

The automaker has reportedly been in talks with Thai Rung Union Car Plc, the country’s largest pickup truck modifier, for over a year now to form an alliance for this endeavour. As is well known, the Thai pickup market has prospered thanks to the paltry three percent excise duty versus 35-40 percent for passenger cars. Pickups account for 60 percent of total vehicle sales in the country.

Tata Motors, it is learnt, will also launch the Sprint in India (possibly in the Uttaranchal facility) and Korea. It is not clear if its wholly-owned arm in Korea, Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicles, will play a role in the development of the pickup. It is equally probable that the company will look at other markets like Turkey and South Africa, which it believes offer great potential for global business. The other interesting possibility could be Latin America where Tata Motors is carrying out a feasibility study with Fiat to use the latter’s facility in Argentina.

The Sprint will be one of the biggest global challenges for Tata Motors which has had a heady run back home with the Ace mini-commercial vehicle. The company has already made clear that it will pay a lot of attention to the international arena and has kicked off this effort in right earnest through critical tie-ups with Marco Polo of Brazil, Hisapano of Spain etc.

As for Thailand, Tata Motors will be entering a highly competitive pickup market dominated by Isuzu and Toyota which take up 75 percent of the market. The balance in the one-tonne slot is taken up by Mitsubishi, Nissan, Chevrolet, Ford and Mazda. Thailand's sales of one-tonne pickups were a little over two lakh units in the first half of this calendar. Isuzu recently launched the new D-Max model and expects to sell about 70,000 units over the next four months. It is also expanding annual capacity at its Samrong plant to two lakh units.

Toyota proposes to sell about 1.8 lakh Hilux Vigo pickups this year. It is also commissioning a third plant in Rayong with a capacity of one lakh vehicles a year which will be scaled up to four lakh units. Taking into account output of the Samrong plant, Toyota's total annual capacity for trucks under the IMV project will be nearly 4.5 lakh units in 2007.

Mitsubishi’s Triton pickup, launched in August 2005, has played a major role in boosting its local and export sales. The carmaker increased its production capacity to 1.8 lakh units at its Laemchabang factory. Almost 80 percent of the new capacity will cater to producing the Triton.

Meanwhile, Nissan is expected to launch an all-new pickup based on common-rail technology this year to boost its share in the segment. And the boost in Chevrolet's market share to 6.2 percent is a result of the strong demand for its Colorado pickup. Ford and partner, Mazda launched their new pickups recently. While the former came out with the common-rail version of the Ranger pickup, Mazda launched the BT-50 to replace its Fighter pickup. AMMAR MASTER