The Peugeot Landtrek is an obvious choice to be assembled at a new Eastern Cape plant to be completed in 2025. Picture: Jaco van der Merwe
Stellantis last week confirmed it will build a one-tonner bakkie at a new R3-billion Eastern Cape facility from 2025. While rumours are rife the vehicle in question will be the Peugeot Landtrek, it hasn’t been confirmed yet.
In this week’s edition of The Citizen Motoring’s Pitstop podcast, Jaco van der Merwe and Charl Bosch discuss the incoming bakkie. They discuss all the bakkies under the Stellantis umbrella in trying to determine which one it could be.
They also discuss Mzansi’s current bakkie landscape to see if the new locally-built bakkie can rival the three top dogs, the Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger and Isuzu D-Max.
Peugeot, one of 17 brands in the Stellantis group, re-entered the local bakkie scene at the end of 2021 after a decades-long hiatus. It introduced the Landtrek, a product of a collaboration between the then PSA Group and Changan Automobile.
The Peugeot Landtrek, which was widely criticized for its high pricing, has not exactly been a local sales success. By selling less than a hundred a month, it has not broken into the top ten monthly sales charts.
As a product of importance to Stellantis in the Middle East and Africa, shipping from South Africa would make more sense than sourcing it from China.
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The Ram Rampage is another bakkie that could make sense. Despite it being only available in left-hand drive, it is reportedly earmarked for other markets in future.
The Ram Rampage is a unibody and not a body on frame platform like South Africa’s top-selling bakkies like other locally built bakkies like the Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger, Isuzu D-Max, Mahinda Pik Up and Nissan Navara.
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Whether Stellantis’ locally-built bakkie will take away market share from the Hilux, Ranger and D-Max remains to seen.
The Stellantis one-tonner will be assembled from complete knockdown kits in a purpose-built plant in the Coega Economic Zone. The Eastern Cape plant is planned to up and running in 2025 with the first units assembled by 2026.
The plant, which will start with batches of 50 000 kits, is said to create 1 000 direct jobs.
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