In the fight to be what the Land Rover Defender once was, but with a modern twist, Munro has landed its latest blow. The small Scottish firm has unveiled the Mk_1 Pick-Up, an open-bed version of its all-electric Mk_1 SUV that trades heavily on off-road prowess, durability and repairability.
The Pick-Up, which looks like the illegitimate love-child of the Tesla Cybertruck and Ineos Grenadier, sports a 1,050kg payload rating and a 3,500kg maximum braked towing capacity – both properly impressive figures.
The trucks will come in three guises: Utility, Range and Performance, with the above figures pertaining to the latter variant, which can also crack 60mph in 4.9 seconds thanks to its 375PS (280kW) and 700Nm (516lb-ft). Thanks to its 82.4kWh battery, it has a range of over 190 miles (albeit not while towing) and can be charged from 15 to 80 per cent using a 100kW DC charger in 30 minutes.
The big sell of these Munro trucks however – and a large part of why the order books are full for the next two years – is durability. The claim is that these workhorses have been engineered and built to last 50 years or more.
Routine maintenance and refurbishment, including battery replacements, has been considered in the design. This should make such works as easy and therefore cheap, as possible.
“We launched Munro to fill the significant gap in the market for an electric-powered, four-wheel-drive, utilitarian workhorse,” said Munro CEO and co-founder Russell Peterson.
“The result is a rugged construction created for decades of service delivering ultimate, go-anywhere, off-road ability. With a full two-year order book for both the MK_1 Pick-Up and the MK_1 Truck, Munro is having to expedite its search for larger premises to meet customer demand.”
Deliveries are set to commence later this year, with Munro trucks generally priced from £49,995 (excluding VAT). Orders are already up to over 200 for the pick-up, with a large number going to commercial customers including companies ranked on the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 financial indexes.
Clearly then, this is a concept that’s struck a chord with a certain audience that just doesn’t quite feel catered to by the current crop of so-called ‘rugged’, ‘durable’ and ‘utilitarian’ machines.
Munro
Pick-Up
Electric Avenue