ONE of the more curious strategies adopted by an international car company is that of Hyundai Motor Company (HMC) and its view of pick-ups or utes.

The South Korean giant seems to have a blind spot when it comes the light pick-up market which it has studiously avoided, despite urging from national distributors and dealers.

In Australia the motoring media has questioned the company for at least a decade on why it is not in the market against the Toyota HiLux, Nissan Navara, Mitsubishi Triton and, more recently, the Ford Ranger. A host of other brands are in there as well sharing a market segment approaching 200,000 units in a good year.

Worldwide, Hyundai Motor Company wants to overtake Toyota. It is making great inroads in many western car markets with an extensive and very impressive (in recent years) range of well-designed and well-built cars at sharp prices.

But the lack of an entry in the pick-up market is leaving a huge gap in the potential of Hyundai to overtake Toyota and, indeed, Volkswagen Group and General Motors; which it needs to climb over to get to Toyota.

Last year Toyota and Volkswagen both notched up sales of about 10 million and relegated GM to third place on the world rankings with about 9.8 million global sales. Toyota and GM are hugely successful in pick-ups and Volkswagen has seen the need by fielding the Amarok.

HMC (including Kia) was fifth with about eight million worldwide sales and clearly needs to broaden its appeal to make up the two million in arrears.

So why the blind spot on pick-ups, which are less expensive to make than cars and seem to have huge potential – not just in North America, the Middle East and Australia but also in the now rapidly emerging markets of Asia, South America and parts of Africa.

A crew-cab pick-up in developing countries of family farmers and family merchants would seem to have great appeal, which is something Toyota learned years ago. In Thailand sales of pick-ups have run between 40 per cent and 50 per cent of sales for years and Thailand is the second-largest manufacturer of pick-ups in the world.

Mounting evidence has all washed over the Korean car-maker without effect. But here’s the thing about Hyundai Motor Company. Hyundai-Kia commands more than 70 per cent of the South Korean market of 1.5 million sales a year.

Do the math. That generates well over a million units a year for a near monopolistic position in the home market.

Analysts reckon that this is worth a higher return of between $1000 and $2000 a car to the group because they only have to price their cars to sell rather than price to compete – as they would if there was fierce competition.

So Hyundai Motor Company is quite used to relying on the underwriting it gets from the domestic market to give it certainty of return on models they put out to the rest of the world.

I suspect that they believe the market for pick-ups at home in South Korea would be quite small and that maybe they are concerned about getting into unchartered territory by launching a major new vehicle line without the comfort of their domestic safety net.

Just to confuse the issue, Hyundai chose the 2015 Detroit motor show to launch a concept of a ute, the Santa Cruz. But Hyundai went to great lengths to explain that it was not a workhorse at all.

Smaller and more car-like than the traditional trucks buyers favour, the Korean carmaker said it was a “completely new interpretation of truck utility for a new generation of buyers”.

It said its research showed that a full-size ute – in US jargon, think Ford F-150 – sales were falling among women and under-30 aged buyers so it aimed its Tucsonbased concept ute at “a segment of buyers looking for practicality and a more carlike driving experience”.

The company said: “Santa Cruz, by design, isn’t an alternative to a pick-up, so towing, payload and ground clearance were not primary goals. Rather, Santa Cruz is intended to attract CUV (Crossover Utility Vehicle) and sedan buyers who are seeking greater utility, without the compromises that traditional pick-ups often require.”

So is it going to dip its toe into the featherweight division rather than risk getting beaten up in the heavyweight division?

Mercedes-Benz, with no track record in pick-ups, is not so timid. It has announced that it is getting into the workhorse ute business, boots and all, and says it has been using the requirements of the Australian market to help shape the features that will be needed for it to attract buyers; not just here but worldwide.

It will leverage off the volume base of the Nissan Navara and craft its own take on what a Mercedes version of a Navara should be.

Featuring a crew-cab for a family or a builder’s crew, Mercedes designers talked of “rough luxury” where they thought they could count on a demand for more luxury in the pick-up market with both leather and high-level trim shared with Mercedes cars. But they intend to offer a true workhorse kitted out with rubber and synthetics; so site and farm dirt can be washed away.

The new Benz ute, reportedly dubbed the GLT and still about two years away (2018-2019), would see the VW Amarok as natural prey as well as top-end versions of the HiLux. It takes Mercedes into interesting new territory that continues to trouble Hyundai which needs to be there.

On top of that, Nissan will share the Navara with sister brand Renault. The pick-up, based on the Alaskan concept, is in the final stages of design and should be available from next year in Europe and in 2018 in Australia.

The Alaskan will be built in Argentina and Mexico, as well as Spain alongside its Mercedes-Benz cousin, but it’s possible it could also be made alongside the Navara in Thailand, making it more accessible to markets such as Australia and South-East Asia.

What’s more it transpires that Jeep is planning a pick-up version of the Wrangler from next year which FCA Australia wants to field in this country.

Jeep has toyed with a Wrangler-based ute for years. It surprised motor show audiences as long ago as 2005 with its Gladiator two-door ute; then in 2011 with a Wrangler conversion kit that created a two-door pick-up, and again in 2012 with the J-12 concept and then in 2016 with the Crew Chief 715 four-door ute concept.

This year, Jeep also displayed a pick-up based on the baby Jeep Renegade called the Comanche. Fiat is also using the Renegade as a platform for its South American-focused four-door Toro light-duty ute.

Five years ago, GoAuto interviewed a leading head office executive of Hyundai Motor Company about the ute issue and he alluded to the fact that the company had other priorities than a pick-up.

With the colourful confucian-based mantra that we come to expect from some Asian car industry managers he told us: “A single fox cannot chase two rabbits.”

If Mercedes-Benz, Renault and Jeep can see fit to get into the ute market, maybe Hyundai needs to get a second fox.

To that end, perhaps Hyundai’s desire to secure a volume base to underwrite a ute in its stable – the second fox – could come from a deal with Mitsubishi to use the Triton as the platform for a Hyundai ute in Asia and here in Australia.

Mitsubishi is already working with Fiat to share the Triton which the Italian company is marketing as the Fullback. The Fullback will go into production later this year in Thailand but is not slated for Australian sales.

And no-one should forget that Mazda is looking for a supplier to source the BT- 50 because its agreement to share the Ford Ranger is coming to an end. This would create an interesting scenario of Mitsubishi sharing with both Mazda and Hyundai thus leveraging Triton production across three distinct strong brands around Asia.

If Hyundai (and Mazda) were to be attracted to such a deal it might take away from some of Mitsubishi’s Triton sales but it would add valuable base load volume to the Triton platform and presumably give Triton, the Mazda BT-50 and whatever Hyundai might call such a ute, a platform that could be fielded at very sharp prices across the whole pick-up cab-chassis market from base workhorses up to the premium units.

So Mazda would find a source for the BT-50 and Hyundai could do worse as the Triton is a strong and competitive entrant that would certainly round out the Hyundai range in local showrooms and make a great fleet companion for the iLoad.

By John Mellor