INSIDE LINE
THEY MIGHT BE
GIANTS
It’s been an eventful decade-and-a-half for Isuzu UTE Australia. Catch up with an ongoing match report.
THE 2008
Australasian Safari started dry and finished wet. In the penultimate special stage, drivers who’d stitched red dirt to the West Oz horizon for a week were suddenly sucking mud. “Rain showers morphed into a solid blanket of water, washing out all traces of the tracks left by the motorcycles that had roostered through only minutes beforehand,” enthused Wheels magazine. “Other than flashes of the primary colours of crash helmets at all points of the compass visibility was down to zero.”
18
MAX*D GO YOUR OWN WAY
Those who could make it out, however, would see something special: a new gorilla barrelling through their midst. Legendary rallyist Bruce Garland was surging up the standings in Australia’s first D-MAX. Dominating his diesel class, the knockabout professional had played a master hand, lurking in the wings before powering his one-tonner home. He’d finish on the podium outright against a couple of large Japanese utes powered by transplanted, six-litre, hotted Chevvy V8 engines, both of which guzzled
WORDS BEN SMITHURST
fuel at over twice Garland’s rate. The D-MAX debuted as the Safari’s first ever oil-burning competitive stage winner and podium finisher. As warning shots go, this was ominous. As far as visibility goes, the D-MAX’s seemingly sudden arrival as a top-flight contender was fitting. Context, of course, is everything. There’d been a lot happening in the Isuzu world of 15 years ago. Firstly, Isuzu and Holden’s parent company, General Motors, had formally separated. This led to the low-key domestic launch of a new local entity: Isuzu UTE Australia (IUA). The once-best-selling Holden Rodeo had been a domestic nameplate for 28 years. But the Rodeo had been built overseas, as an Isuzu D-MAX, before being rebadged for Australian sale. Not any more. Finally, the D-MAX would be sold locally—and, yes, raced—under its birth name. All of a sudden, the Isuzu D-MAX was here, seemingly from nowhere. “I’ll tell you, though,” says Garland, “it was a bloody good thing, too—it needed to be. The D-MAX launched in Australia in 2008, which was right in the middle of the global financial crisis. But the market was evolving and the D-MAX was one of the first, fast, turbo-diesel utes.”
