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.

WORDS BEN SMITHURST

THE2008 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.”

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 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.”

INCOMING!

Rally spectators might have been shocked at the seemingly sudden appearance of a tearaway Isuzu-badged ute, but for the motoring press, it was another pulse in a developing story.

Isuzu boasts a truck- and car-making history dating to 1916—and had even sold 122 units of a ute, the Wasp, from the Japanese domestic market in Australia in 1965. (Boasting 43kW, all were painted Wasp Blue. Top speed: 116km/h. Starting RRP: £848, or $25,800 in today’s money.)

But in 2008, the brand was starting over.

Automotive industry news hub GoAuto had an inkling of the demise of the Rodeo badge earlier that year. In May, journalist Marton Pettendy had sniffed out the formation of a nascent Isuzu UTE dealer network, almost four months before IUA’s own official announcement.

Pettendy had caught then IUA spokesperson, the wonderfully named Richard Power, on the hop.

“We’re up and running now, doing the backroom stuff,” said Power. “But there are still no land lines, there is building works in progress and it’s pretty rough and ready. We can’t even take a photo of the front of the building yet.”

“I have no comment on future product,” said the original PR man from IUA. “You’ll have to come to the launch to find out.”

In September, IUA finally officially confirmed the date for the D-MAX’s arrival. It debuted at the 2008 Sydney Motor Show in October.

Reviews were generally positive.

Featuring Isuzu’s 3.0-litre four-cylinder common-rail turbo-diesel engine, all 11 variants (seven 4x4 models and four 4x2s) produced 120kW and up to 360Nm over a wide rev range for smooth, easy driving. With a choice of five-speed manual or 4-speed auto, and rear-wheel drive and dual-range four-wheel drive, the D-MAX had dynamic chops, but was also of its time: workmanlike rather than flashy, leveraging an already established international reputation for reliability.

“It was designed to handle the tough going,” recalled CarsGuide’s Graham Smith in 2015. “One of the appeals of the D-MAX was its three-tonne towing capacity, which was at the cutting edge at the time.”

Sales began steadily, with 39 original dealerships selling 273 vehicles in those final months of IUA’s debut year. Yet the foundations were solid—and enthusiasm within Isuzu UTE’s local enterprise, backed to the hilt by its Japanese HQ, was high.

The nascent brand’s first managing director, Hitoshi Kono, was bullish.

“Although fairly new here, the D-MAX is an extremely popular ute around the globe,” he said, “especially in Thailand, the world’s biggest market for Japanesedesigned one-tonners, where D-MAX is the established number-one seller.”

(Interestingly, most of the major Japanese marques—including Isuzu—had shifted their ute-building operations to Thailand in the preceding years.)

“Thais buy more than three times as many utes as Australians, and work them to the bone,” said Kono-san. “But why do the Thais prefer the D-MAX to utes built by the giant Japanese carmakers?”

“Because they realise the D-MAX is a true premium ute with truck heritage engineering that offers rock-solid reliability and frugal fuel economy.”

STRENGTHTOSTRENGTH

It was the beginning of a remarkable period of growth for the marque in Australia.

For 2013, the year that the newgeneration Isuzu D-MAX entered the market, the brand would deliver 7782 vehicles. Things stepped up a notch in 2014, when the D-MAX’s sibling, the MU-X, had its launch. Annual sales leapt to a combined total of 16,674 units.

A year later, IUA had 100 dealers scattered around the nation and annual sales passed 20,000 across D-MAX and MU-X combined.

By the time he found himself piloting his new D-MAX in the 2008 Australasian Safari, Bruce Garland was a leading name in rallying. If his surge through the Australian Safari field was unexpected, it was only because of the specialist rally builds driven by his rivals. He was a respected performer.

Similarly, by 2015, Isuzu UTE had established its bona fides as a brand that delivered in Australian conditions. The foundations for its own tilt at the top echelon were also entrenched.

Thus the two-vehicle marque found itself in a fortunate upward spiral: as sales grew, so did the on-the-ground experience of Australian owners. As those owners passed on word-of-mouth about their Isuzus, more local buyers were attracted to the brand.

Debuting in March 2015, Isuzu UTE Australia’s I-Venture Club 4WD training program helped consolidate that rise.

It took Isuzu UTE nine years to rack up 100,000 sales in Australia, a mark reached in 2017. Doubling that figure took less than five, hitting the milestone in February 2021.

“We appreciate that we are the vehicle of choice for these 200,000 Australians,” cheered former Managing Director Hiroyasu Sato. “Whether it’s a skilled tradesman in a D-MAX Cab Chassis, a family with young children in an MU-X, or a couple looking to explore our great outdoors, there is an Isuzu vehicle to suit everyone.”

As of 2022, utes accounted for over a fifth of overall Australian new-car sales. Having evolved with the overall ute category, a once steadfastly low-tech segment, Isuzu has maintained its reputation for reliability while festooning its top-end models with sophisticated tech and consciously contemporary styling.

In 2022, for the first time, Isuzu UTE Australia entered the annual new vehicle sales charts in the top 10 as Australia’s ninth best-selling vehicle brand out of over 50 in-market. The D-MAX would chart as the seventh best-selling vehicle overall last year, charting fourth in the ‘1-tonne Ute LCV’ segment with 24,336 vehicles delivered.

Meanwhile, record deliveries of the newly released Isuzu MU-X, with 10,987 units sold in 2022, would see it crowned Australia’s best-selling ‘Ute-based SUV’ for the ninth consecutive year.

It was also a year in which the Isuzu D-MAX would be awarded ‘Best Dual-Cab Ute’ in the Drive Car of the Year awards … for the second year running.

“This Isuzu D-MAX is fantastic,” said judge Trent Nikolic. “It’s practical, it drives really well, it’s comfortable on-road and it’s safe.

“I think that’s really something that’s noteworthy; it’s a safe option for the family.”

A safe option for the family. That’s perhaps not the first phrase that might’ve leapt to mind had you seen Bruce Garland burst through the low desert scrub in Western Australia in 2008. His eyes on the prize and foot to the floor, he made the most of shifting conditions to power to the podium.

“We had a lot of success in that D-MAX,” grins Bruce. “A lot.”

The evolution continues.