U.S. Mahindra Launch Delayed – Again

We’re perhaps starting to wonder if the Mahindra TR20 and TR40 diesel powered pickups will actually ever make it to U.S. shores. Recently it was reported that the trucks had completed all the necessary testing to meet Federal requirements including those set out by the Environmental Protection Agency. However, according to a statement from Pawan Goenka, Mahindra’s President of Automotive Operations, the U.S. launch has been postponed – from Spring until December 2010.

Initially Mahindra planned to launch the TR Stateside in Spring ’09; then it was pushed back to December ’09. Here were are a year later and seemingly little progress is being made; which must be making things increasingly frustrating for John Perez at Global Vehicles, the authorized importer of Mahindra trucks to the U.S. Perez has already stated that communication between GV USA and the Mahindra mothership has been sporadic at best.

According to Goenka, Mahindra aims to acquire between 5-7 percent of the small truck market in the U.S., but increasingly, even that is looking like a pipe dream. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that small trucks built outside the United States and sold here are subject to a 25 percent tariff (known colloquially as the “chicken tax’). Not surprisingly, Mahindra is keen to seek a partner to locally assemble the 2.2-liter, diesel engined two and four-door trucks. Yet, thanks to yet further delays and mixed signals from India, such a scenario, let along selling the trucks here in sufficient numbers, is looking more and more unlikely.

[Source: pickuptrucks.com]