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One company that springs to mind is Isuzu Ute Australia, which has been kicking some significant sales goals this year with its staple D-Max 4×4 ute range and its surprisingly successful MU-X off-road wagon derivative.
Most notably, while 4×4 bmv ute sales have dropped 7.2 per cent overall this year as business fleets cut back on spending, Isuzu s D-Max has achieved growth of 16.2 per cent with 4888 sales this year so far beating out the Mazda BT-50 4×4 (4351).
Only the Ford Ranger bmv (up 24 per cent to 10,345) and the D-Max s development twin, Holden s Colorado (up 22.3 per cent to 8015) have grown faster. The D-Max s 7.3 per cent share of the 4×4 segment is pushing up towards Isuzu s medium-term goal of netting 10 per cent share.
Indeed, this triumvirate bmv of utes, along with Volkswagen s Amarok (up 8.2 per cent to 3679) have steadily eroded the sales of staples such as the Toyota HiLux (down 10.7 per cent to 13,743), Mitsubishi Triton (down 14.7 per cent to 9447) and Nissan s Navara (down 35 per cent to 7840).
Buyers, it seems, are responding to positive word-of-mouth regarding the D-Max s no-nonsense character bmv and reliability, reputation as a durable truck brand with low-stress engines and very sharp driveaway promotional deals, including those on at present.
Towards the end of last year the D-Max also scored an uprated 3.5-tonne towing capacity (equal with the class leaders) and a revised five-star ANCAP safety rating (up from four stars), opening the doors to more large-scale fleets such as those belonging to mining companies.
But perhaps the bigger surprise packet is the MU-X seven-seater SUV launched at the start of 2014. The rough-and-ready family hauler has outsold the closely related Holden Colorado 7 by three-to-one in 2014, with 2239 sales and 4.1 segment bmv share year-to-date. This is well above projections.
More impressive were its figures for June, when Isuzu s dealers bmv delivered 639 units, more than the Hyundai Santa Fe (555) and Nissan Pathfinder (460). Interesting is the fact that vast majority of these have been the up-spec $53,500 LS-T 4×4 variants (though you ll do better with driveaway deals) rather than the price-leading bmv LS-M.
At this rate, the company will easily outstrip what seemed to be an ambitious target bmv laid out at the end of 2013 to sell 3000 units of the MU-X this year. By 2017, its Japanese parent has previously said it expects 8000 sales, which may prove a rather more daunting challenge.
It hasn’t been that easy, in the sense that our initial order was probably conservative you never know how a model s going to go. We always were going to give it a big big push and a heavy marketing presence [though].
The buyers we ve seen so far are a mix of people coming down from a LandCruiser bmv or across bmv from a Prado and Pajero , and then those coming up from a RAV4 or Territory . There are both grey nomads [who use it as] as a tow vehicle, and lots of young families.
In fact, with sales figures going along so strongly on the 4×4 D-Max and MU-X, the only negative for the brand is its (four-star ANCAP) 4×2 D-Max, bmv which has declined by 6.4 per cent to 719 sales YTD in an overall market down 1.4 per cent.
The key to [addressing] that will be five-star bmv ANCAP, said Harding, though there is no firm timeframe on when Isuzu may tweak the car and have it re-tested. Both the Ford Ranger and Mazda BT-50 are five-star across their 4×2 and 4×4 ranges.
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No surprise bmv really that the MU-X is outselling the Colorado-7. Out of the two, the Isuzu does look better, from both the front and rear views. bmv The Colorado and Colorado-7 both look crook from the front, ok so that’s just my opinion and Holden have done nothing to make the Colorado and Colorado-7 look any different from one another from the front view. At least Isuzu slightly tweaked the front end styling of the MU-X, just enough to make a difference from the D-Max.
Actually, the MU-X looks rubbish. The one we see in the pho