Australia could build RHD Rams for the rest of the world

Walkinshaw’s sophisticated local re-manufacturing operation has the potential to open up right-hand-drive Ram truck production to the rest of the world… provided the demand is there.

After a decade of fruitful collaboration with Walkinshaw, Ram Trucks Australia believes there’s potential for a RDH export program, and its re-manufacturing partner is ready and waiting to get stuck in.

“There is potential for it,” Ram Trucks Australia general manager Jeff Barber said when asked if an export program was on the planner.

“At this point in time, we’re pretty busy doing what we’re doing right now, but I think in the future there is potential for export of right-hand-drive.

“There’s often barriers with tariffs and stuff like that, and you’ve got the issues of transportation and so forth, but I think in the future there is opportunity to do that.”

Walkinshaw’s conversion process is rigorous and done to a standard that’s almost identical to that of Ram’s own factories in North America.

The end result is a car that feels like it was originally built with the steering wheel on the right – if you ignore the weirdly-shaped drivers’ side mirror.

The conversion process takes around 12 hours for each truck, or 85 man hours in total.

Right now, Walkinshaw is completing around 100 conversions a week for Ram with two shifts per day, but at its peak – March 2023 – the company performed around 1000 conversions in a single calendar month; there’s certainly enough production headroom to cater to a broader export program, if one were to eventuate.

Right now, Walkinshaw-converted Rams already have an export destination – New Zealand.

However, for other markets who also drive on the left side of the road – like South Africa, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United Kingdom – Australia could end up being their source of RHD Ram pickups.

Most of those markets might not have as big of an appetite for full-size American utes, and some may not even require vehicles to be converted from LHD to RHD (like Japan), so the additional volume would likely be incremental against the number of vehicles RAM sells in Australia alone.

Regardless, Barber said there’s enough production capacity to take care of new export destinations.

“We can ramp up capacity. In a few months from now we’ll move from this facility into a new facility, but with the same flexibility there where we can ramp up capacity as we need to.

“I can see a considerable upside in the segment going forward.”

That upside could very well translate into more jobs for Australians. By Walkinshaw’s estimate, around 3000 people are directly employed by companies involved in the RHD conversion of US-sourced large pickup trucks like the Ram 1500, Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra.

And Aussie know-how is already having some export impact beyond New Zealand: Premcar, the engineering firm responsible for Nissan’s Navara Warrior and Patrol Warrior, announced earlier this year that it will supply Nissan South Africa with conversion kits for the Navara Pro-4X Warrior. Will Ram follow it?