General Navigation and Commerce Company (Genavco) looks forward to gain further ground in the regional truck segment with its partner Isuzu Motors of Japan through the launch of new product lines that adhere to the strict environmental norms, and better service.

Says a spokesman for the company: “The partnership between the two companies was forged in 1980 at a time when all Japanese manufacturers were present and known in the UAE. Genavco took on the massive task of entering a saturated market and managed to successfully introduce the Isuzu range of vehicles (passenger cars, SUVs, vans, buses and commercial pick-ups and trucks).
In six years, the partnership bore results with Isuzu becoming one of the top commercial sellers in the UAE. The selling policies of Genavco and the support of Isuzu Motors took the Isuzu trucks high in the market to become today one of the two leading light-duty selling commercial vehicles in the UAE, he says.
Isuzu’s current market share in the UAE exceeds 40 per cent in the medium-duty trucks’ segment.
The N*R series (medium-duty series) has been Japan’s number one selling truck for 34 years, and the world’s best-selling Japanese truck for a very long period, he says.
According to the statistics provided by the Automobile Manufacturer Association in Japan, Isuzu topped the list of Japanese truck manufacturers in the medium-duty segment for 2002 with 56,779, followed by Mitsubishi with 29,391 and Hino with 27,325.
The UAE, through the combined efforts of Isuzu and Genavco, has become the second largest market for Isuzu trucks in the Middle East, second only to the much bigger market in Saudi Arabia.
In 2003 Genavco introduced the new Isuzu D-Max pick-up successfully in the UAE. “The D-Max is the crowning achievement of almost nine decades of engineering evolutions,” says the spokesman. “It is the fifth generation of Isuzu pick-ups brought out by Isuzu Motors, the first car builders in Japan, since 1919.”
The spokesman adds: “Isuzu is committed to the reduction of environmental pollution. Specifically, the company is avidly pursuing the development of cutting-edge diesel engine technologies in order to further improve their advantages, which include high performance and durability as well as high thermal efficiency. Simultaneously, Isuzu is focusing its energies on clean engine R&D (research and development), with the objective of reducing diesel emissions.”