2019 Mazda BT-50 to benefit from more Australian input

When the next-generation Mazda BT-50 arrives in Australia in 2019, it will feature a greater level of engineering input and dealer investment than the current model in an effort to push it further up the sales ladder in the highly competitive one-tonne ute segment.

When developing the new ute as a joint venture with Isuzu, Mazda plans to learn from the challenges it encountered when developing the current BT-50 alongside the Ford Ranger. In that collaboration Ford was assigned a majority of the heavy lifting for engineering and development.

Mazda Australia managing director Martin Benders said the company would have a much greater input next time around.

"I'd have to say, because Ford became the lead engineers of this ute they had a lot more invested in it," he said.

"As they started to shrink without Falcon they needed something to hang their hat on so they've put a lot of effort into the Ranger, a lot more than we've needed to because we have a robust range of SUVs and passenger cars.

"If I go back to the last changeover between the old model to the current-model BT-50, Ford did a lot of work earlier than we did, we sort of just carried through and I think that was to our detriment, we just assumed the buyers would come but I think we should have done some more hard work.

"For this one (with Isuzu) we will do a lot of hard work to cement it down."

He explained that improving sales wouldn't just come from engineering and development, but also a greater focus on dealer initiatives.

"We're already working with our dealers, we're going to have some key dealers in every city and country areas that are heavily focused on BT-50 with dedicated people who can talk with BT-50 buyers," he revealed.

"It's to improve our retailing of that sort of vehicle. The ute segment in total will become the biggest segment if not this year, then next year (and) we definitely have to be there."

Mazda's Australian arm was largely responsible for initiating the partnership with Isuzu.

Mr Benders said that it would be hard for Mazda to drastically improve sales during the car's current life cycle, and they will do what they can to keep sales ticking over until the arrival of the new model.

He also revealed that Mazda's Australian arm was largely responsible for initiating the partnership with Isuzu to co-develop the BT-50 and D-Max, with the Australian one-tonne ute segment simply too lucrative to overlook.

"Mazda has taken this global position that we have enough to do with passenger cars and SUVs to not worry about a ute, but from our perspective the ute market is slightly different here and it justifies having that vehicle in our range," he said.

"The announcement last year that we're going to develop another BT-50 in partnership with Isuzu is largely in response to how important it is in our market and keeping our dealers and customers in that segment.

"We are a big player, and if it's a big part of our business they (Mazda headquarters) will respond to that. We want to keep BT-50 in our range and it will only stay in our range if we keep being successful with it, so we need to do some more work with that."

The BT-50 managed to achieve record sales in 2016, with a 4.0 per cent increase in 4x2 sales (5015 units) and a 9.2 per cent jump in all-paw variants (9489). However it was well off the pace of the mechanically-related Ranger (6054 4x2 and 30,880 4x4) and even the Isuzu D-Max, despite having fewer dealerships (5038 4x2 and 11,321 4x4).

One reason for the Ranger striding so far ahead of the BT-50 is that the majority of BT-50 sales come from private buyers, whereas the Ranger feasts on lucrative fleet and mining contracts. 

Mr Benders said the main goal of the next BT-50 will be to narrow the sales gap on the Ranger and the Toyota HiLux, Australia's best-selling model of 2016.

"If you break up the BT-50 or the ute market, if you look at private buyers, we actually outsell Ford, but most of the market is not in private buyers – it's in small, medium and large fleet. Ford always had a large fleet contact and infrastructure," he said.

"Ranger is within a whisker of HiLux, which is fine. We still think there is plenty of scope with the other competitors for us to do better without trying to take those two guys on and still build a nicer business.

"We've been pretty successful with this BT-50 compared with what we had previously, albeit not as successful as Ford has been. We want to be that successful again with the new ute because it is important to our business model to give us a country network which a lot of non-commercial (brands) don't have."

Mr Benders did not discuss whether Mazda will be targeting fleet and mining contracts with the next BT-50.

Will the new-generation Mazda BT-50 improve sales in a joint venture with Isuzu? Tell us what you think in the comments below.