Spy pictures : Ashok Leyland’s Tata Ace rival caught testing

Ashok Leyland is getting increasingly aggressive and eying the market of Tata Motors across all commercial vehicle segments. Its alliance with Nissan in India has given it a shot in its arm and the company is now equipped with world class engine and chassis technology. The talk of the JV manufacturing an LCV was rife, with various theories coming out about what the new pick-up from the JV will look like.

Now our Chennai based colleague Joy Sharma has managed to click a picture of this new LCV from the Nissan – Ashok Leyland JV. The pick-up truck, slightly bigger than the Tata Ace, will help Ashok Leyland enter the L CV sector where Tata has tasted unprecedented success with its Ace. The LCV in these pictures, we reckon is based on the Nissan NV200 platform, albeit with modifications to make the set-up suit the Indian conditions. The truck is badged Ashok Leyland, but a passenger vehicle variant of this truck may be badged Nissan as a part of the alliance between the two companies.

The details on the specifications of the engine powering the mini-truck are still quite fuzzy, but we think that this machine will have a 1.5-litre K9K diesel engine powering it. The unit produces 85hp worth of power and around 200Nm of torque, which is very good for a commercial vehicle in this segment. Since we barely managed to get a glimpse of the car, and the details on the machine are still very scarce on the internet, we were not able to deduce much from the sighting. However, with whatever little knowledge we have about commercial vehicles, we understand that this is the 2.5 ton mini truck that the two companies were said to be developing together.

We are still scavenging the web for more info on this Tata Ace competitor. As and when we get more info, we will share it with you.