The distributor of the Tata Xenon in Australia, Fusion Automotive, has a long road ahead of it in making Tata a household name.
To illustrate how challenging the future remains for Tata, consider this: Fusion Automotive has no immediate plans to join the FCAI (Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries). It’s simply a matter of cost, says Fusion Automotive MD, Darren Bowler, and CEO Oliver Lukeis.
“It’s an expensive exercise to join the FCAI,” Bowler told motoring.com.au
A cost of $30,000 per year would be chicken feed for larger car companies, but Fusion is a small company fighting on multiple fronts to establish Tata as a brand. It’s also trying to balance the effort and cost to establish and expand a dealer network, with enhancing the brand image to increase sales. Either alone won’t do the trick.
Dealers cannot be sustainable with just a trickle of sales, and national sales will be forever limited if the dealers are in the wrong place or there are too few.
That problem can be best exemplified by Queensland and Victoria. Queensland is more a rural market for the Xenon, Bowler believes, but in Victoria, in contrast, the Xenon is selling more to metro-based plumbers and electricians – tradies, in other words. Locating the dealers appropriately is a fundamental verity for the brand, just as it is for any other car company.
Sales will naturally flow for a brand that delivers on its promise. Bowler has the marketing man’s knack of making Tata’s budget-price value equation sound unique in the market, but there are plenty of other brands offering that same sort of value, he admits.
“What we’re doing is saying: ‘Yes, there’s an opportunity in the market between $20,000 and $30,000 for a light commercial vehicle’, but we’re offering feature content and safety in all of those areas.”
Tata has its own agenda to pursue in making sure the Xenon is properly equipped to match the competition in mature markets like Australia; it’s not just out of kindness. The Indian company – the parent to Jaguar Land Rover – has longer-term plans to expand into Europe and North America.
Australia is a nearby market (in the same general time zone) with right-hand drive roads like India’s, but a buying public that’s quite demanding and able to satisfy its demands by shopping around. And as Bowler states: “The market here is intensely and hotly contested in all segments, but the pick-up/cab-chassis segments in particular. Just look at the top 10 cars in VFACTS – three of them are HiLux, Ranger and Triton.”
Tata Motors Australia currently has 25 car dealerships across the country, with Queensland leading the way with 10 dealerships, Victoria with 5, Western Australia with 4, NSW has also 4 dealerships.
“For India, Australia is good grounding when you’re looking at global positioning. If you can meet the criteria for Australia, you can sell anywhere,” Bowler told motoring.com.au
It isn’t an easy market to crack, as Opel found out, leaving the country after just one year. So it’s logical to ask whether there will come a time when Fusion or Tata throw their respective hands in the air and say that the Aussie market is just too hard.
Bowler seems to be of the belief Opel’s management was unrealistic in its approach to the Australian market. “If you lived by those rules in this industry, you wouldn’t enter the industry,” he says.
“It is very competitive, as we know. We have costings and budgets and timelines that we want to meet; for us, we’re committed to the brand; we have the support of Tata Motors in India; we’re in it together. It’s not us as a distributor, just doing it on our own. We have the support of India to drive this brand in this business.”
From October 2013 Fusion Automotive took over distribution of the Tata Xenon and put the brand on a national footing. Fusion is a branch of the Walkinshaw group and it was established to help the company diversify and remain viable in Australia.
The reason for diversifying? Come 2017 Holden will close the doors of its Elizabeth plant in South Australia, thus ending the supply of locally-built donor cars for HSV to modify. HSV is the jewel in the local Walkinshaw crown.
Pricing* for the 2014 Tata Xenon range:
- 4×2 Single cab chassis $22,990
- 4×2 Single cab pick up $24,990
- 4×2 Dual cab $26,990
- 4×4 Single cab chassis $25,990
- 4×4 Single cab pick up $27,990
- 4×4 Dual cab $29,990
*Excludes on-road costs.
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