Diesel pickups from India delayed

Mahindra & Mahindra still hopes to be the first Indian automaker to enter the passenger vehicle market in the U.S., but the company has miles to go before ringing up its first sale.

Make that millions of miles. Global Vehicles USA Inc., Mahindra’s American distributor, had hoped to have the automaker’s compact pickup trucks on showroom floors here by next summer. That launch date has now been pushed back to the fourth quarter of 2009.

The reason? Execs at Global Vehicles, based in suburban Atlanta, say Mahindra ordered up more testing to make sure the trucks meet the expectations of American buyers. So 25 pickups will be driven 125,000 miles each over U.S. roads over the next several months. That’s more than 3.1 million miles.

“They want to make sure they get the vehicles right,” said Xavier Beguiristain, Global Vehicles’ vice president of marketing. “They’re very keen on that.”

Mahindra’s diesel-powered two- and four-door pickups still need get all the requisite U.S. regulatory approvals as well. They will have to meet the EPA’s tough new diesel emission requirements for the 2010 model year, a goal that Beguiristain said is attainable.

“These will be 50-state vehicles,” he said....