RENAULT Australia managing director Justin Hocevar has revealed that a plan to expand rural dealerships nationwide was in direct response to the expected arrival within two years of the Alaskan pick-up he touted as “the next step” for the brand locally.

Speaking with GoAuto at the national media launch of the Renault Koleos in northern New South Wales, Mr Hocevar confessed that the French brand had to establish itself in country regions well before its Nissan Navara-based pick-up arrived, likely in early 2018, and he anticipated some hurdles along the way.

“We’ve obviously got a job to do to communicate to the market that we’ve got a right to play in this space,” he said.

“There will be undoubtedly a number of people who scratch their heads and say, ‘does a French manufacturer have any credibility in this space?’

“Our simple answer to that is we’re a global brand, we have success in many markets not just in Europe … we’ve already got strong credibility in LCV in a number of different markets, we’ve been selling smaller pick-ups in a number of markets before and obviously we’re part of the (Renault-Nissan) Alliance.”

Mr Hocevar confirmed Renault Australia planned to add four dealers to its network by the end of 2016, but half that number were now expected, bringing the total to 56 nationwide. The push now, he said, was to focus on rural expansion.

“We’ve grown our network not just in metropolitan areas, we’re focused on making sure we’ve got good representation in provincial and regional centres and as a result there’s an increase in trust, of presence, of the local business person and their having trust and faith in our brand,” Mr Hocevar continued.

Asked whether the regional push was directly attributed to the anticipated release of the Alaskan pick-up, the managing director replied “absolutely” before explaining the required lead time it would take to build a Renault “carpark” in a regional centre for a service centre to then operate in.

“It’s a long-term view and we go into that with our business partners in the network with their eyes wide open in terms of what they’re going to need in terms of people and facilities, in terms of aftersales service capability and how their business case looks,” he continued.

“We’re not always necessarily going into market areas where there is an existing park of (Renault) vehicles there that they (dealers) can start servicing, so they’ve got to create that before they can get fixed cost absorption.

“A lot of them (dealers) understand that point of view – what you’ve got now, what you’ve got coming in the future, we see that opportunity.

“Fortunately we’ve got good relationships with our dealers and they typically sing our praises and that leads to more dealers popping up in our network.”

While Mr Hocevar was pleased that Australia was the first market in the world to launch the Koleos into the sizeable medium SUV segment, he confirmed that the same feat would not occur for the Alaskan, noting that it “would be a very tall order” to have the pick-up ute range arrive before the end of 2017.

“We would have liked to have been more like Koleos, an early market to launch, but we haven’t been able to achieve that (with Alaskan),” he said, adding that even an early 2018 local launch is not yet locked down.

“It’s not confirmed (but) I would like to think it (2018) is achievable. There are a number of markets that are ahead of us and we just have to bide our time.

“Because this is a vehicle where there was no outgoing version, all the discussion around it has been quite long and where we (typically) stay quite quiet about a new model until maybe a year out from launch, this has been the sort of vehicle to say ‘hey, it’s coming, we’re going to start testing the market.’”

Although the Alaskan shares its body, cabin and platform with the Nissan Navara, Mr Hocevar pointed out that a Renault engine was already used in the vehicle. He also outlined what a French vehicle could bring to the segment.

“We’ll pull strengths of the Alliance in that product (Alaskan),” he said.

“It’s already obvious the alignment of the vehicles’ (Navara and Alaskan) attributes are stronger than one you’ll see in other variants and we want to call upon that strength.

“One of the other strong points will be design (because) it’s a great family look without looking like it’s from a sausage family and we will want to communicate on the European flair that’s been added to the vehicle (ute type).”

The thriving 4×2/4×4 pick-up segment represented 16.5 per cent of the total new vehicle market to July 2016 with 113,590 units sold year-to-date. Six of the main models in the segment each eclipsed Renault’s 6278 total sales so far this year, which were down 7.6 per cent compared with last year primarily due to the run-out of Koleos and Megane stock ahead of new models arriving.

By Daniel DeGasperi