TAIWANESE company Kymco is making sales headway not only in Australia’s crowded ATV market but also in the side-by-side utility vehicle market.

These machines have attracted strong buyer support within the farming community, principally for their load carrying capabilities, but also for their safety features, which include a sturdy roll cage, seat belts, and leg nets on each side of the footwell.

Recently, I was at the Werribee 4x4 proving track on the outskirts of Melbourne to get to grips with Kymco’s UXV 500 model – a welcome alternative to its more dashing ATVs - leaving me to enjoy a stint behind a good old fashioned steering wheel, plus savour the easily accessible dash-mounted gear lever arrangement.

Perhaps the most telling detail that Kymco revealed at the end of a satisfying morning in which I put their bread-and-butter farm products through their paces was news of its extremely worthwhile two-year standard, or three-year factory warranty covering unlimited kilometres, hours and parts, also labour.

There was a minor mechanical hiccup at the end of the day but Kymco had provided me with machines that had spent their working lives being thrashed around the Werribee test track by an assortment of journalists determined to squeeze every ounce of performance from allotted stints on its product line-up.

Australian marketing manager Alan Collins was striving to offer customers quality products - in keeping with Taiwan’s post-war legacy of ramping up its electronics industries to unrivalled levels of excellence.

* Graham Fuller was a guest of Kymco Australia/NZ at its ATV trials day in Victoria.

* www.kymco.com.au