Car News

Hyundai’s ute will be built for Australians

19 Sep 2019

Alex Rae 1

Hyundai’s first workhorse ute won’t be half baked with Australian input ensuring it can rival the best in class.

Hyundai Motor Group’s upcoming dual-cab ute for both Hyundai and Kia will be a ute built to meet Australian needs.

In a quest to expand sales and help galvanise its top three-position on the Australian sales ladder, Hyundai’s ute will be designed to offer competition-rivaling spec.

Hyundai Australia marketing director Bill Thomas told Practical Motoring that the local arm has been sending detailed specifications to the brand’s home office in South Korea for around ten years. The ute is yet to be finalised but details such as drivetrain, tray size, and towing requirements have been made clear.

“As much as we can we’re trying to convince the head office that we need a certain type of pickup, that we need a certain type of powertrain, we need the vehicle to be competitive in all sorts of different ways and we’ve been putting submissions through to head office on what the vehicle needs to be for probably a decade,” said Thomas.

“So, we’ve been very detailed in our request of what a competitive pickup for us would look like. So, for us, that’s something that is very clear from our side.

“This is requirements from what it needs to do, this is the dimensions of the load bay, this is the what it needs to tow, etc.”

Earlier this year Kia Australian boss Damien Meredith told media that a dual-cab and single-cab ute was coming for both Kia and Hyundai, with petrol and diesel engines and that Kia was aiming for a large 10 percent of segment sales.

Hyundai has so been less committal on details and ambitions for its version of the same ladder-frame ute, though both South Korean brands likely have a long road ahead in the fiercely faught Australian ute market.