Pakistan’s First Completely Locally-Built Truck Was Made In A Factory With No Electricty And The Government Tried To Kill It

I love an underdog story, like so many of us do. The more under that dog, the better. I think the story of Proficient, the first nearly-completely locally-built truck ever made in Pakistan, is about as under as a dog can get. This was a useful little truck designed to compete with the juggernaut of useful little trucks, Suzuki, all while being hamstrung at every turn by the Pakistani government. These were trucks made in a factory with no electricity, water, or even phone service. The project eventually failed, but not without a fight. Let’s dig in a bit to the tale of Proficient.

Proficient started as an idea from mechanic and UK-educated electrical/mechanical engineer Khalil ur Rahman in the mid-to-late 1980s as a way to compete with Japanese pickup trucks like the dominant and ubiquitous Suzuki Carry.

The goal was to make something that wasn’t just assembled in Pakistan, but to build something that used as many parts locally made as possible, and in this sense, all reports seem to indicate that ur Rahman did just that. Most sources suggest that the Proficient pick-up used 95% locally-built parts, and, significantly, those parts included the engines and transmissions.

But I think it’s how these little pickup trucks – which seem to be similar in design to Japanese-style Kei-class trucks, with their mid-engine/cabover design, though I think the Proficient trucks were a bit bigger than the Kei-class regulations – were built that makes this story so fascinating. In part due to a lack of support and even outright hostility from the Pakistani government at the time, the Proficient was built in a factory that, incredibly, lacked electricity, water, or phone services.

A 1989 article in the Herald described the North Karachi-based factory’s engine block-manufacturing like this, for example:

The entire project seems to have been designed with the sole intention of disproving the belief that modern automobiles cannot be manufactured without sophisticated heavy machinery imported from abroad. The inventor’s biggest triumph, indeed, is the process by which the engine-block and gearbox are manufactured. Ordinary clay is first used to make an outer mould for the engine block, and then a tandoor-like oven is used to cast the molten alloy into the required shape. The rough surfaces are then ground and finished to precise tolerance levels using domestically manufactured lathe machines.

For a small company to decide to produce their own engines (they made 1006cc three-cylinder diesel engines and a two-stroke gas engine) is impressive enough as it is – that decision I think was at least a part (definitely not all) of what effectively killed the Elio company, for example – but to make them with such old-school and labor-intensive methods is truly remarkable.

Everything was made this way: seat cushions and upholstery, casting parts, handbrake levers, it was all manufactured with labor-intensive but machinery-light traditional methods. There were hand tools and blow torches, likely oxy-acetylene welding rigs, but that was about it, because, as I mentioned, the factory had no power.

The Herald article notes this lack of amenities as well:

To start with, the factory has not been given an electricity connection even though the surrounding area seems to be completely electrified. The telephone department has sent them a letter saying that they are unable to extend a line to the factory, but all it took was a glance outside the window to ascertain that the mill next door has two telephone lines, while the army camp that is just a few hundred yards away also has its own telephone hookup. Needless to say, like almost half of the city, this area too, has no water supply.

I should mention that there are pictures, like the ones shared on this Facebook post, of the factory showing equipment that must have required electricity; it’s possible that power came from local sources like generators or that the factory eventually got electrical power:

So why was this factory, which you would think would be a source of pride for Pakistan and be the sort of thing the government would champion, being treated so poorly by the Government?

The issue seems to be that the government at the time had a very strong preference for cooperative ventures with foreign companies, especially ones that had lots of money to throw around. A pretty clear example of this is how Suzuki vehicles were made exempt from sales tax, being locally assembled cargo vehicles, and yet somehow the Proficient, despite being far more than just locally assembled, was not covered by this exemption, and was heavily fined for non-payment of sales taxes when they asked for “immunity from sales tax under existing regulations.”

Despite these financial burdens, the Proficient was still cheaper than the Suzuki trucks.

Proficient even managed to scrape up the resources to shoot not just a commercial, but a bad-ass commercial featuring a guy karate-kicking the little truck, because the little truck can take it:

The commercial shows two models of Proficient, the cab-over one and another truck with a hood (and a jauntily-angled license plate):

I haven’t been able to find out exactly how many Proficient trucks were built over the years, but the company seems to have been viable into the early 1990s. It seems the government at the time denied the company a mass-production license, so between that and its limited production capacity, I can’t imagine the numbers are all that high, but I suspect they must be in the thousands, which is still impressive.

In 1990 the company exhibited what seems to be a one-off passenger car with a pretty dramatically-sloped hood and lighting that I think had to be borrowed from another car:

This passenger car never made it into production, but it is a good reminder that Proficient fully intended to keep going and expand their market into mass-market small cars.

In this slide of the various models Proficient produced, there’s a few interesting things: the passenger car, of course, their various models of small trucks, including two cabover and two be-hooded varieties, but I’m really curious about that one on the lower right, the open nine-seater thing! What was that for? Some kind of closed-campus runabout/people mover thing? Was that just for internal factory use?

I don’t think many of us have heard of Proficient, or, really, any indigenous Pakistani carmakers. India has a number of automakers that have captured global attention, companies like Tata or Mahindra, but that hasn’t been the case with Pakistan. Could Proficient have been that sort of company for Pakistan, had they enjoyed a supportive attitude from their government instead of what seemed like actual hostility?

Maybe. It does seem like the window for such a company has passed, but who knows? We’re entering a new era of electric cars, so perhaps there’s going to be new windows of opportunity for scrappy upstarts like the Proficient team, determinedly casting engines in tandoori ovens and daring to take on giants like Suzuki.

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