Thailand's Love for Isuzu : Seemingly every third car was an Isuzu in city of Pattaya

I recently wandered through Thailand and found 1 in every 3 car to be an Isuzu especially in the city of Pattaya. It was peculiar since in my home country, India, it is not the case. We rarely see an Isuzu, or for that matter of fact such pickup vehicles being owned by civilians in handsome numbers

I investigated a bit and found a couple of interesting reasons behind this trend:-

1. Vehicle versatility : The vehicle seems to be a strong multi-utility engine of growth for Thai population who want to own a vehicle serving both personal and commercial purposes. As I could get to know from my tour guides, Pattaya is 90% tourist population and significant number of tourists leverage these trucks to ship their jet-ski's and other heavy cargo. Another key usage of vehicle is as a shared taxi, which in local language they call as "Tuk-Tuk"

2. Inexpensive, durable and long-lasting : Both the cost of ownership and the cost to maintain the pick-up truck like that of Isuzu D-MAX (most- selling model in the market) is very less and has longer life compared to other vehicle categories

3. Ability to handle heavy, non-uniformly sized loads and poor road conditions : While I did not experience poor sections of road, but multiple automobile analysts online pointed out to the fact that pick-up trucks make huge chunk of market share due to poor road conditions. Apart from poor road conditions, the ability of truck to handle load of any shape and size if of immense importance

At the same time, it is equally interesting to know the business dynamics of the pickup truck market in Thailand. Two players, namely Isuzu and Toyota dominate the market with a combined share of >80% (only pickup market) and it is worth noting that although Toyota was the early mover in the R&D space (even though they launched the product 2 years post Isuzu) and could get close to customer needs with Hilux model, Isuzu has been able to takeover them and attained the first spot for almost 3 years now

Isuzu D-Max : 175,425 units sold in 2022 (46% market share)

Toyota Hilux : 148,101 units sold in 2022 (38% market share)

Give a quick view on their product launch chronology below to understand why Toyota lost the early mover advantage:-

Toyota

Hilux (1968) -> Hilux Revo (2015) -> Hilux Champ (2023) -> EV Model (2025)

Isuzu

KB (1966) -> DMAX (2002) -> DMAX V2 (2020) -> EV Model (2025)

If you go through the specific changes each model brings to the table, it is mostly centered around vehicle versatility/customizability and safety features

Recently ISUZU mentioned moving away certain bit of manufacturing from Thailand to Indonesia, do you think, it will affect the #1 spot?