This is rather fascinating. After Toyota and Mazda signed a partnership agreement in May, according to Car Advice there is now news from Down Under that the next Mazda BT-50 pick-up truck could be based on the top of the range Toyota Hilux.
This is news to us as the original agreement only mention that Toyota are to share it’s fuel-cell and hybrid technology with Mazda and that in return Mazda would share its economical SkyActiv petrol and Diesel engines with Toyota. This one-tonne truk could therefore also belong to the “long-term” collaboration agreement between the two carmakers.
At the moment the Mazda BT-50 is based on the Ford Ranger T6 and both vehicles are developed at the AutoAlliance plant in Thailand. This year the BT-50 was given a mid-life makeover so Mazda will have to figure out there plans for the next-gen in the near future too.
A joint-venture seems like the obvious route to take for Mazda due to the lack of scale, and it is left with a decision whether to keep working with Ford or to head over to the pick-up market with Toyota. In response to this, Mazda managing executive officer Masahiro Moro politely said: “We are working on a future program. It is very early days.”
Moro took into account that the BT-50 was a crucial truck, or as they say in Australia, New Zealand and certain South-East Asian countries: a ute, and that if they were to stay on with Ford that it would be given “adequate updates”. He refused to say anything about whether or not the BT-50 will be twinned with the Hilux, passing the topic off as a sensitive subject. “I honestly don’t know. They do have pick-up trucks in North America and Asia, but I truly don’t know because we have not discussed,” he stated.
He didn’t reveal a lot on the wider Mazda-Toyota partnership either. “We don’t have a complete agenda yet. This alliance was formed with the clear articulation of working together to develop better cars,” he stated.
