We might see a new small pick-up truck from Honda soon, to rival Toyota’s long-dominant Hilux. A Honda executive recently disclosed the brand’s intention, describing the pick-up truck market as “attractive,” reported Australian portal CarAdvice.
Honda Asia and Oceania regional operations chief operating officer Noriaki Abe noted that the truck segment was a hard one to ignore and one that the brand needed to consider seriously. “The pick-up truck market is an attractive market and we believe that we have to look into this,” he said.
Heeding the fact that the demand of pick-up trucks were particularly great in markets such as Australia and Thailand. “If we see that there is enough volume to make our business viable then we would consider such possibilities,” Abe revealed.
The Honda Ridgeline was the company’s first attempt at a pick-up truck, with unibody construction as opposed to the regular body-on-frame construction of its competitors. It was built and sold in North America between 2005 to 2014.
The second-gen model, which will be slotted in to compete with other trucks such as the such as the Toyota Tacoma, the US-market Chevrolet Colorado and the like, is currently underway, and is slated to be unveiled sometime next year. While that might be the case, a right-hand drive model is reportedly not in the pipeline at the moment – this means that it probably won’t make it into showrooms in this region.
Instead, a new small pick-up tailor-made for the region is thought to be better suited to compete with the Toyota Hilux and Ford Ranger over here, although, as the brand has yet to lay out a business case on the table, a small Honda truck could still be many years away.
What do you think about a new Honda pick-up truck? Currently, despite strong sales of the Hilux and the lack of a competitor from Honda, the H brand already leads Toyota in terms of overall (not just passenger car) sales in Malaysia, so could you imagine what a Honda pick-up would do for the bottom line?
SPIED: 2017 Honda Ridgeline
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Junk design from Honda, truck need body on frame to withstand off road , unibody will break up
Honda Ridgeline, way better looking than the rest of pickups here.
can rival Proton Exora Arena first.
U won’t go wrong with sushi cars or even trucks. Body on frame or unibody, it will still fetch good RV.
i cant imagine they come out with a VTEC diesel engine
The ridgeline is just a car with an open cargo space. if honda is serious then they have a lot of catching up to do. the tray needs to be seperate to allow for flat trays and service bodies, and if it’s meant to survive outside the city it needs a seperate chassis to soak up pot holes and corrogations without causing the whole car to rattle to pieces within 6 months of rural use.