By George Guimarães | 11/14/23 | Translated by Jorge Meditsch
The absolute leader of the Brazilian pickup market with 140.7 thousand units licensed from January through October – 43% of the total – Fiat will miss the opportunity to add some more hundreds or even thousands of vehicles in 2023.
The Italian brand seems not convinced that it could or should launch the Titano before the year’s end, as was planned. Despite it does not admit it, the launch of Fiat’s first large pickup will happen only at the beginning of 2024.
The reason should be the delay in the adaptation for Brazil and the region of a product initially created for the Chinese market that, in South America, would be named Peugeot LandTrek.
Recently questioned by AutoIndústria, Herlander Zola, Fiat brand’s vice president for South America, said there is no defined date and that he prefers not to repeat what happened to the Rampage, also a Stellantis product, which reached the stores more than three months after the launch for lack of production.
Anyway, the interval between the confirmation of the unprecedented Fiat vehicle and its arrival at the dealers would already be wide, about six months. And the brand would not have anything to lose with the early announcement made in May. On the contrary, it could even harm the sales of the competitors.
Zola also said that the many presentations of Stellantis brands’ products in the second semester – Fastback Abarth, Peugeot 2028 Turbo, and, in the next days, the Citroën C3 Aircross, are just some of them – took Fiat to consider a new date to launch the Titano.
Whether due to development delays or commercial or marketing strategy, the competitors thank for the postponement. Counting on the power of a dealer net well-oiled in small and medium pickup sales, the Titano could at least disturb traditional segment models, especially the older and less negotiated ones such as the Chevrolet S10 and Nissan Frontier.
Of course, to face the Toyota Hilux, the eternal leader among large pickups, the challenge is much greater, and Fiat will need more than its net power. There will be no space for technical flaws from the Titano before a public that has the Hilux as a quality and cost-benefit parameter.
The pickup D segment, which includes models built on chassis, diesel engines and around one-ton cargo capacity, reached more than 98 thousand units in the first ten months of 2023. About 40% of the sales went to Toyota, and the Chevrolet S10 was second but much behind (21.5 thousand units), followed by the Ford Ranger (15.8 thousand).
Mitsubishi L200, with 9.7 thousand deliveries, Nissan Frontier (6.7 thousand and Volkswagen Amarok (6.4 thousand) complete a team whose total sales grew less than 3% in 2023, much under the 23.5% of the country’s pickup total sales including compact, medium and large luxury models.
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