For Americans waiting to purchase a Mahindra & Mahindra diesel pickup truck, the wait just got longer.

Although the India-based manufacturer received emissions certification from the Environmental Protection Agency in August 2010, enabling the company to sell its 2011 model trucks in the United States, not a single truck has arrived at an American port.

Cathy Milbourn, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., recently told the automotive news Web site Ward’s Auto that Mahindra’s certification for 2011 model-year trucks would expire at the end of this year and the company had not applied for 2012, diminishing chances that the turbo-diesel trucks will be available anytime soon.

Ernesta Jones, another E.P.A. spokeswoman, told Wheels in an e-mail message Wednesday that the “ball is in Mahindra’s court to apply” for 2012.

Mahindra remains engaged in a legal fight with Global Vehicles U.S.A., a company based in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, Ga., that won the contract to import the trucks.

The process of bringing Mahindra’s light-duty T20 and T40 pickups to America has resembled a soap opera ever since Global Vehicles signed on in September 2006 as the company’s official importer. Global Vehicles expected sales to begin in 2009, but by June 2010, with no vehicles to sell, it filed a lawsuit in United States District Court in Atlanta. In the suit, the company claimed it had invested $35 million building a network of some 350 dealers while Mahindra repeatedly failed to meet deadlines to make its pickups ready for sale in the United States.

In August 2010, Mahindra released a statement in which it claimed to have terminated its relationship with Global Vehicles. The distributor withdrew its case in district court when it was told by officials in Britain that a binding arbitration case brought there could not go forward while legal action was pending in the United States. The arbitration process in Britain, the only legal action currently pending between the two companies, is ongoing.

As the legal drama has dragged, a group of would-be dealers has formed the Mahindra Dealer Action Committee, a kind of legal defense fund, to raise money to support Global Vehicles’ legal fees. Dealers have already spent franchise fees estimated at $175,000.

Mahindra has a small presence in the United States, selling tractors and farm equipment, and seemed eager to expand its automotive business here. But when its light-duty diesel trucks will come ashore is still anyone’s guess.

Calls and e-mails from Wheels to Global Vehicles and Mahindra USA were not answered.