Toyota’s New Truck : It’s a Couple of Inches and Cylinders Short of Competition
Toyota’s long-awaited new T100 pickup truck goes on sale Thursday, but the vehicle once thought to mark Japan’s first real assault on the pickup market owned by Detroit is being described as a tad too dainty.
The almost full-sized T100 comes only with a V-6 engine, the kiss of death when it comes to the traditional macho buyer of big pickup trucks, who demands a powerful V-8 under the hood.
“But this has got a ton of torque,” insisted Frank Bachman, general manager at Hightower Toyota in La Crescenta. “And a V-8’s coming. The factory told me it’ll be here within 24 months.”
Indeed, industry observers expect Toyota to gradually build up sales from an initial 60,000 imported T100s to a U.S.-built version that could eventually sell 200,000 a year. Industry speculation even has Toyota buying a vacant General Motors assembly plant to produce the truck.
“The plans aren’t very ambitious for the first year, but we think the truck will be a very important product in the long term,” said Chris Cedergren of AutoPacific Group, a market research firm.
In the meantime, Toyota will count on owners of its own compact pickups and of other imported small trucks “trading up” to the T100, built in Japan.
Prices begin at $13,998, Toyota said Tuesday. Since it is subject to the 25% tariff on imported trucks, it may have trouble competing on a price basis with such mid-sized U.S. models as the Ford Ranger and Dodge Dakota, both slightly smaller than the T100.
The T100 is just four inches shorter and narrower than the Ford F-150, the top-selling full-sized pickup. The cargo bed is just half an inch shorter and 1 1/2 inches narrower. But the six-cylinder engine--a version of the one used in the Toyota Camry--pales by comparison.
“This truck simply needs more power,” Car & Driver magazine said in an otherwise favorable report on the T100.
A Toyota spokesman said the truck’s engine compartment is too small for the auto maker’s V-8 engine. However, the company is reportedly looking to buy a V-8, perhaps from a U.S. manufacturer, that would fit the T100.
Toyota trucks have been at the top of quality surveys for years, and analysts say the prospect of fitting a 4-by-8-foot sheet of plywood flat in the cargo bed of a Toyota--not possible until now--will make the T100’s modest sales target easy to hit.
Americans bought 4.5 million light trucks in the 1992 model year, including pickups, utility vehicles and vans, more than 90% of them domestically built. Toyota sold 263,000 trucks in this country.
The full-sized pickup truck market has always been dominated by Ford and Chevrolet. But the Japanese invented the compact pickup in the 1970s and helped create a boom that has moved millions of motorists from cars into trucks.
