Ford Charts New Territory in Thailand Under Trade Deal

After watching a one-way flood of vehicles coming in from Thailand under a free-trade agreement, Australia is hoping the tide will turn with the first shipment of locally designed and built Ford Territory SUVs to the Southeast Asian country.

Some 100 high-series all-wheel-drive Territory Titanium TDCs last week were loaded onto to a roll-on/roll-off car and truck carrier in Melbourne bound for Thailand.

“This is a small, but important deal and will provide an important base on which to potentially build further exports,” Ford Australia President and CEO Bob Graziano says in a statement. “Building on the success of the Territory in Australia and New Zealand, we expect the Territory Titanium model to do well in Thailand.”

The Australia-Thailand FTA took effect in 2005, Thailand’s share of total automobile imports to Australia rose from 5.4% in 2004 to 17.2% in 2010, in the process becoming the second-largest source country after Japan.

However, Australian vehicle exports to Thailand have been hindered by government-imposed non-tariff barriers.

The Ford order came after the auto maker displayed a 7-seat Territory Titanium TDCi at the Bangkok auto show in March as a toe-in-the-water exercise to gauge public interest. It attracted strong attention from prospective Thai buyers.

Ford Australia engineers packaged the Territory to Thai specifications: The radio is tuned in 50-kilohertz increments instead of the 100-kilohertz increments used in Australia, and the rear-passenger DVD player has been modified to play Thailand region DVDs.

Ford Australia previously exported a small number of Territory models to Thailand in 2005 and sold another 2,300 in South Africa.

It is one of Australia’s best-selling SUVs with more than 130,000 deliveries since its 2004 launch. Another 12,000 have been sold in neighboring New Zealand.

The Territory Titaniums heading to Thailand boast Ford’s 2.7L TDCi diesel engine, which was added to the range in the SZ model update as part of Ford Australia’s A$232 million ($241.8 million) investment in sustainability.

The TDCi powerplant is an intercooled single-turbo 60-degree V-6. The engine has a compacted graphite iron cylinder block, enhancing both strength and noise, vibration and harshness reduction.

Its double-overhead camshaft design features alloy cylinder heads with four valves per cylinder. Induction is via common-rail high-pressure diesel injection with Piezo injectors, including the single-variable-geometry turbocharger.