Tata Xenon is called Tonka
A new contender for the low-cost car market heralded its arrival with a high-riding concept pickup truck designed by head of design at Holden Special Vehicles.
New Australian pickup truck distributor Tata has unveiled a one-of-a-kind show car ahead of the brand's auto show debut next month. The Tata "Tuff Truck" is unlikely to enter production, but some of the locally developed accessories could become a reality.
Tata vehicles are distributed by a company owned by the Walkinshaw family that also represents Holden Special Vehicles, and that's where the design services of Julian Quincy come in. The same person who designed the new HSV GTS had a hand in adding extra features. on this tata xenon ute.
“We wanted to create a concept vehicle that reflected the Australians' love of nature and the harshness of our landscape,” said Darren Bowler, managing director of distributor Tata Fusion Automotive.
"By bringing Julian Quincy and Walkinshaw Automotive's engineering and design team into the development of the concept vehicle, we were able to draw on over 25 years of vehicle design and modeling experience to create the concept vehicle."
Quincy said, "I think the modest cockpit has become a desire in its own right, and we wanted to show how well the Xenon's design works when carefully crafted visually to suit the local market."
The Tata brand will return to Australia next month, but the car for which it is best known - the tiny urban subcompact Nano, the world's cheapest car at $2800 - will not be among the models for sale. Later this year, Tata will relaunch a new line of vehicles called the Xenon and add passenger cars next year.
Pricing and information about the Ute model has yet to be announced, but the company said the lineup "will offer a higher level of value than what is currently available on the market." Prices for Chinese cliffs start at $17,990.
Tata vehicles have been sporadically sold in Australia since 1996 after a Queensland distributor began importing them primarily for farm use. It is estimated that there are already around 2500 Tata heavy pickups on Australian roads. But there are many more Indian-made cars on Australian roads, albeit with foreign badges. Over 20,000 Indian-made Hyundai i20 hatchbacks and over 14,000 Indian-made Suzuki Alto subcompacts have been sold in Australia since 2009.
But other cars of the Indian brand did not have such success. Australian sales of Mahindra cars and SUVs have been so weak that the distributor has yet to report them to the Federal Chamber of Motor Vehicles.
The original Mahindra ute received a poor two out of five stars in independent crash tests and was later upgraded to three stars after technical changes. The Mahindra SUV is released with a four-star rating, while most cars get five stars. The new Tata ute line does not yet have a crash safety rating.
However, new car distributor Tata in Australia believes the origin of the cars will be a competitive advantage. “There is no harder place on earth to test vehicles than the tough and demanding roads of India,” said Tata Australia's newly appointed car distributor Darren Bowler of Fusion Automotive.
Tata Motors, India's largest automotive company, acquired Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company in June 2008 amid the global financial crisis. The acquisition gave Tata access to Jaguar and Land Rover designers and engineers, but Tata has yet to launch a brand new model with their input. The Tata Xenon ute was released in 2009 and is also sold in South Africa, Brazil, Thailand, the Middle East, Italy and Turkey.
This reporter on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling
