Ford F350 News

Sales figures show our car market is becoming more like the US.

Ford's F-750 Tonka truck is a life-size version of the iconic children's favourite.

Ford’s global HQ in Detroit will this year salute an Australian design that turned into a smash sales success for the brand – the first ute, which has developed into the vehicles that see the Blue Oval leading the segment around the world with nameplates such as Ranger and F-Series.The body style was developed after a Victorian farmer’s wife wrote in 1933 to the then boss of Ford in Australia, Hubert French, famously asking for “a car and a truck but we need a car to go to church on Sunday and a truck to take the pigs to market on Monday”.French put the challenge to Ford’s young design engineer, Lew Bandt, who devised a two-door cabin with a load-carrying tray at the rear, blending the tray sides into the coupe body – rather than the separated cabin and trayback truck commonly used until then. The rest, as they say, is history – 80 years of it.Bandt’s first full-size sketches – on a 10-metre blackboard -- quickly became blueprints and then prototypes, and the ‘coupe utility’ went into production in 1934, with examples heading off to the US and Canada.It became a popular vehicle style in Australia, with 22,000 sold between 1940 and 1954, and spawned generations of Falcon utes, which have sold more than 455,000 since the first XK rolled out in 1961. And the Australian influence continues. The Aussie designed and developed Ford Ranger is a strong seller in more than 180 markets around the world.Lew Bandt’s original drawings are archived here in Australia, and one of the original coupe-utes is still on display in a Victorian museum. Its descendants have gone on to resounding global success, with Ford selling more than a million Ranger-based vehicles around the world in 2013, while the F-Series marked its 37th year running as the top-selling truck in the US. Ironically, Bandt died after an accident while he was at the wheel of a restored version of his coupe-utility in 1987.This reporter is on Twitter: @KarlaPincott

The top end of the working ute business has been barren since Ford ran out of F-Series trucks, following the end of right-hand drive production in South America, which has created an opportunity for Chrysler.The American company is now mounting a detailed investigation into the potential for the Ram in Australia, as it prepares for the next all-new model, and the chance of right-hand drive trucks for overseas sales."There’s an opportunity with the Ram. I think it's worth investigating," Chrysler's senior manager for international product, Kevin Tourneur, says.He attended the Australian press preview of the new Jeep Patriot and Dodge Avenger in New Zealand last week and now has a strong understanding of the opportunityl for the Ram.“We don’t know if the time is right yet to bring it in, but this would be the time to start thinking about it. It's a matter of working with the markets," Tourneur says.He believes Australia's traditional support for both commercial and sports utes, over more than 40 years, points to the potential with Chrysler's long-running rival to Ford's F-Series, which is the world's favourite truck."But you need to have sustainable demand, because the Ram is not right-hand drive and was not developed with right-hand drive in mind, so there would be a lot of engineering work," he says.Chrysler Group Australia’s managing director, Gerry Jenkins, believes the Ram has a place on our roads and is keen to see it here."We’d love to have Ram here . . . I’m really excited about the idea,” Jenkins says."It’s not entirely about the numbers, but there probably needs to be demand for about 10,000 a year right-hand drive in the international market before it’s viable.""I think we could sell 3000 a year in Australia, especially with the Cummins diesel engine. There’s really nobody in that large ute market, there’s no competition.”The commercial market has big potential for the Ram, according to Chrysler spokesman, David McCarthy."If we brought the Ram here, more than half would be cab-chassis for ambulance and food delivery use,” McCarthy says.Jenkins says he has already had a stream of inquiries about the Ram from a mining company in Western Australia, and impressed by their persistence, eventually flew over and met with them."We’re going to supply some to them, but they will be left-hand drive," he says.However, Jenkins says converting Rams to right-hand drive is not an option he wants to consider for the broader Australian market.`"We’re not going to do conversions . . . we’re only interested in getting one that’s ADR compliant. People want the authentic product.”Jenkins says the same approach would apply if there was a chance to bring the latest Dodge Charger here, which will be unlikely as long as demand for the left-hand drive version continues to outstrip supply."Could we sell it in Australia? Of course we could,” he says."I think it’s the best-looking car we have. But it’s not really a possibility right now.”Tourneur says the strong American styling of Dodge vehicles, including the Ram and Charger, is the key to the brand's growing success.There’s no point in us trying to follow European design. If people want European, they’ll buy European," he says."We need to stay true to the US style. That unique design, that’s what we can bring. People all over the world want to be different."The character about Dodge is DNA from the trucks and the 70s muscle car phase . . . strong emotions and passion. Every product has to have a certain `Dodgeness.’