Most of Australia’s most popular utes are produced in Thailand and the Ford Ranger is the only ute developed from scratch here, but Australians now have access to a new off-road tough-truck that was conceived, designed, engineered and at least partly manufactured locally – the 2025 Isuzu D-Max Blade . Though Isuzu is a Japanese brand and the D-Max is made in Thailand, it was Isuzu Ute Australia (IUA) that first pitched the idea of developing a beefed-up, factory-backed ute specifically for the local market. Walkinshaw Automotive Group – based in the Melbourne suburb of Clayton – was contracted to design, develop and build the the modified D-Max for IUA, with blessing of Isuzu head office in Japan, and the new D-Max Blade is now ready for its market release late next week.
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IUA PR manager Mark Harman says the brand was keen on developing a model “unique to the Australian market”, and Walkinshaw was the ideal local company to make that happen. “[If it was global project] it wouldn’t be as unique, because then it would be across every single market. What we were looking for was something unique to the Australian market,” he said.
“Something completely Australian, bespoke to our climate here, but also the roads and the terrain here as well. That’s why we had to go local, because we could a better job here with a local manufacturer.