Big pickups to hit New Zealand

Ford and Toyota to join Ram and Chev

It wasn’t that hard to predict. Ford will bring the world’s best-selling pickup to New Zealand. More of a surprise: it seems Toyota will follow suit.

Demand for ‘full size’ trucks in New Zealand has driven GMSV and Ram a healthy head start on their rivals. Ram in particular recently celebrated the production of its 20,000th right-hand-drive pickup.

Respected motoring journalist Alastair Sloane broke the story on his website, autonews.nz:

“Truck market leaders Ford and Toyota are in the midst of signing off on right-hand-drive versions of their bigger North American market pickups for sale in Australia and New Zealand.

Both companies are working towards the end of research and development – Ford with right-hook F-150 models engineered by Thailand’s RMA Group, and Toyota with the Tundra converted by Melbourne’s Walkinshaw Automotive Group

(WAG). Thailand’s RMA Group is a long-time Ford-backed accessories company with supply links to the Australian mining industry. WAG is the Melbourne engineering and assembly company that converts all-American Ram trucks. It once housed Holden Special Vehicles.

Ford is expected to okay the F-150 for production within the next six months; Toyota is likely to do the same with the Tundra later this year or early next.

Both will be V6 hybrid models.

As usual, Ford and Toyota are officially saying very little about the R&D programme, but it is understood the F-150 and Tundra are being trialled using petrol-electric engines with similar output.

The F-150 runs a 320kW/760Nm 3.5-litre V6 Powerboost hybrid, and the Tundra a twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre V6 hybrid delivering 326kW/790Nm.

The move by Ford and Toyota comes largely on the ballooning growth in this part of the world of full-size US pickups from Ram and General Motors’ Chevrolet Silverado division.

The growth of right-handdrive Ram trucks has been described as ‘phenomenal’.

Ram alone has delivered 20,000 pick-ups since 2014, including a record 6100 or so in 2022. The increasing popularity of such vehicles is also apparent in Silverado’s numbers: of its 5000 sales in a few years Down Under, more than 2300 were recorded last year alone.

WAG converted both Ram and Silverado variants; Ram for Ram Trucks Australia (owned by the Ateco Group) and Silverado for General Motors Specialty Vehicles (GMSV). It used separate staff on separate assembly lines for the US arch rivals until about six months ago, when Silverado moved to a new site and Ram took over its territory to cope with new demand.

The 20,000th right-hook Ram and its supercharged 6.2-litre V8 engine rolled off the production line at the beginning of February. Latest figures show around 18,000 have been sold in Australia and 1000 or so in New Zealand. The remaining 1000 are now being delivered to both markets.

Most Ram variants run a 5.7-litre V8 petrol engine.

Chevrolet Silverado has sold 5000 variants Down Under, 2300 in 2022 alone.

The sales success of right-hook Ram trucks has been described by Ram International boss Bob Graczyk as “phenomenal”.

He told Australian media last year: “When we first looked into the business opportunity and asked how big the market could be no one really knew what to expect, maybe 3000, 4000, perhaps 5000 (sales a year). It has completely exceeded our expectations.”

Ram Trucks Australia is now the biggest vehicle assembler across the Tasman. It employs 641 assembly workers, engineers and office staff.

A recent survey of new vehicle sales in 22 countries last year showed New Zealand and Australia were the only two where a one-tonne diesel truck was the No.1 seller. Further, three of the top four selling vehicles in New

Zealand were diesels.

Similar town-and-around trucks were also the No.1 choice in the United States and Canada, where the Ford F-Series rules, although the Ford range runs mostly on petrol or petrol-electric engines.

The 22 nations made up 75 per cent of the 2022 global sales market. The study showed small/city cars topped sales in 11 countries, SUVs in seven, and utes/pickups in four. Norway was the only country where an electric vehicle was No. 1.

Most of the small/city cars used petrol engines. SUVs mixed petrol/diesel/hybrid/EV powerplants - the Song SUV in China is an example. Ranger and Hilux in this part of the world are 99 per cent diesel.

Ranger chalked up 11,577 sales in New Zealand, ahead of second-placed Hilux’s 9787. The positions were reversed in Australia, where the Hilux headed the charts with 64,391 sales against Ranger’s 47,479. Hilux has been the best seller overall in Australia in each of the past seven years.

Both vehicles recorded a similar share in each market: Ranger had 7.0 per cent of overall 164,813 sales in NZ, and Hilux 6.0 per cent of 1,081,429 in Australia. Diesel utes alone occupied more than 20 per cent of the NZ market and 18.5 per cent of Australia’s.

• Pickup truck numbers in North America in 2022: Ford F-Series, 739,000; Silverado 513,000; Ram 468,000; Toyota Tundra 95,000.

Sequoia for NZ

It’s not through Toyota, but Kiwi buyers will soon be able to buy Toyota’s Sequoia SUV. South Island engineering company Glacier International is to bring the 2023 hybrid Toyota Sequoia SUV from North America to New Zealand.