New Corvette and Silverado here soon

Australia's largest independent importer of new American vehicles, Queensland-based converter Performax International, will release Chevrolet's new C7 Corvette and Silverado within months.

But it has no plans to release an Australianised version of Ford's all-new F-150 pickup as it struggles to keep up with demand for bigger, more expensive and more profitable US utes.

Despite costing up to three times as much as they do in the US, Performax has no shortage of buyers for the F-Series, Silverado, Dodge Ram and Toyota Tundra, but the F-250 will be its biggest seller because it can be sold in unlimited numbers in all Australian states and territories.

Performax this week released an F-250 line-up that meets high-volume Australian Design Rules certification, joining Queensland-based Harrison F-Trucks. Ford Australia stopped importing 10th-generation F-Series models converted to right-hand drive in Brazil in 2007.

For now, Performax's smallest F-Series is the MY15 F-250 Super Duty, priced from $105,000, but by the end of this year it will add the larger F-350 and, next year, the bigger-still F-450, both based on the 12th-generation F-Series first launched in the US in 2009.

Performax, which also plans a sub-$100,000 F-250 SuperCab 'tradie special', also sells the Ram and Silverado, making it the only Australian converter to sell all three American pick-ups, which accounted for about 300 sales last year.

Most recently, it released the MY14 Tundra, which is smaller than the F-250 and Silverado/Ram 2500s and around the same size as the F-150 — the all-new aluminium-intensive 13th generation of which enters production in October.

As well as being North America's top-selling truck for 37 consecutive years and the USA's most popular new vehicle bar none for the last 28 years, the F-Series continues to have a strong local following since being discontinued by Ford Australia, which sold as many as 4000 trucks a year here.

Performax says it will build up to 500 F-trucks annually at its Gympie base north of Brisbane, ramping up to 30 a month from January. When a second production line comes on stream, it will employ around 100 staff with the capacity to produce 1000 vehicles annually, including trucks, SUVs and sports cars.

It says it has not ruled out importing the F-150 in the long-term, but is focussing on Super Duty models (F-250/350/450) because, unlike sports cars and smaller trucks such as the F-150, they do not have to be crash tested and do not attract luxury car tax, which could potentially make some F-150 models more expensive than F-250s.

That's because unlike Super Duty commercials the F-150 is classed as a passenger vehicle, based on a complicated occupant-to-payload formula in which the number of passengers is multiplied by 68kg then subtracted from the payload.

Performax started life as Corvette Queensland 25 years ago, when its two directors imported their first Corvette in 1989. Since then it has sold as many as 700 Corvettes — more than any other Australian converter, including about 110 examples of the previous-gen C6.

The company's first trucks arrived in 1996 with a deal to supply the Victorian ambulance service with GMCs, and since then its best-seller has been the Silverado, with about 150 sold last year and a high of around 220 in 2012.

Performax has completed work on the new 2015 Silverado 1500 and has now almost completed the 2500. Both models are due for release in November.

It is also well into right-hand drive development of the C7 Corvette, which GM will not produce in RHD. But Performax will not be the first to release the latest Corvette in Australia, as it has in the past, with at least two Victorian outlets on the verge of doing so.

Rather than leading the development of key RHD components like a new electric power-assisted steering rack, Performax will this time use an off-the-shelf design developed locally for its competitors, delaying its release of the C7 Corvette until early next year.

Performax will still develop a range of Corvette models, including top-shelf variants like the Z06 Convertible, and has about 60 orders for sports car that will cost upwards of $150,000.

But it's a measure of its focus on heavy-duty pickups that development of sports cars including Performax's beloved Corvette is taking a back-seat to trucks like the F-Series and Silverado, which were developed with the help of ex-Ford and GM engineers.

In fact, Performax director Greg Waters said that while his company's future lay in trucks and SUVs, he expected Ford Australia's release of the first factory Mustang next year to decimate demand for local sports car conversions.

"My belief is sports cars are dead," he said. "When Ford brings in a Mustang for under $50,000 why would you convert a Camaro? How good's your brand loyalty? It'll kill the sports car conversion market."