Think pickup and you probably have visions of it bravely carrying a whole lot of load at the back of its bed. If not that, it’s one of these going off-road and slogging through mud.
The last thing you’d expect to see a pickup is on the racetrack, unless it’s doing some recovery work to free a beached car on the gravel. But Thailand, being one of the craziest pickup markets in the world, won’t let that utilitarian image get in the way of a good time.
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Over in Thailand, there’s something called the Super Series. It’s essentially the country’s premiere motorsport league the features several categories. One of those categories includes, you guessed it, pickup trucks.
Some of the biggest players in the pickup segment compete in that series, neatly bringing us to the Isuzu D-Max. It’s been a competitor in that league of a while now, and this year is no exception.
On display at the 2024 Bangkok Auto Salon are two examples of the breed, one as a single cab body and another as an extended cab. You might think that the wild front bumpers and huge wings at the back are a little too much for these trucks, but that’s nothing compared to what’s under the hood.
If you think the engines are lightly modified, you’d be wrong. This is Thailand we’re talking about, the land of extreme diesel tuning. Yes, both trucks still use the familiar 3.0-liter Bluepower turbodiesel. But instead of 190hp and 450Nm, it’s cranked all the way up to 525hp and, wait for it, 1,100Nm of torque. These are serious pieces of kit, and did we mention these were rear-wheel drive and use an honest to goodness six-speed manual? No fancy sequential gearboxes here.
The suspension is a custom job, sitting much lower than standard D-Max models. There’s also a wider track to keep these things planted on the road, along with massive brakes to scrub off speed. A carbon fiber aero kit complete’s the race car transformation.
