Toyota Takes On the Big Boys

You might say Toyota is confident that the third time will be the charm as it prepares to roll its new jumbo pickup into showrooms this fall.

The 2007 Tundra will be “the biggest, boldest badass truck in Toyota history,” declared a usually reserved James Press, president of Toyota Motor Corp.’s Torrance-based U.S. division, in unveiling the truck this month in Chicago. “It’s a gargantuan leap to the head of the pack.”

The bold talk may be understandable, given Toyota’s rapid growth and expectations that it will eventually overtake General Motors Corp. as the world’s largest automaker.

But in the big-truck segment, Toyota hasn’t had much to crow about. Indeed, with the restyled Tundra, the Japanese automaker hopes to do what two previous models could not: carve out a significant slice in a full-size pickup market still dominated by the Big Three American automakers.

Ford Motor Co. sold 901,463 of its F-Series pickups last year in the U.S., outselling the Tundra about 7 to 1. General Motors’ Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra and DaimlerChrysler’s Dodge Ram also easily outsold Toyota’s biggest pickup.

Toyota’s previous models fell short because they simply weren’t big enough to satisfy the mostly male buyers of ultra-big pickups. The current Tundra is referred to by industry analysts as a 7/8ths model because it is slightly shorter and narrower than its American rivals and can tow only 7,200 pounds, about 20% less than a big Ford or Chevy.

Earlier Toyota trucks also suffered from being designed in Japan, where pickups are compact and used primarily for light farm work.

This time around, Toyota relied heavily on its U.S. design center in Newport Beach to come up with a pickup that appeals to American tastes.

The new Tundra is as big as anything Detroit offers. It has a more muscular look, with a broad front grille, and is taller, wider and longer, with more powerful engines and greater towing power than its predecessor.

With an optional 350-horsepower V-8 engine, the Tundra can tow 10,000 pounds, rivaling the Chevy Silverado. The new Tundra also will have full-size rear doors, a center console big enough to hold a laptop computer and door handles large enough that they can be opened with work gloves on.

This isn’t the first time a Japanese automaker has offered a true full-size pickup. Nissan Motor Co. introduced its Titan in late 2003 with a heavy marketing campaign; last year the company sold 86,945 Titans, falling short of its goal of 100,000.

For now, Toyota’s sales goals for the 2007 Tundra remain modest. It hopes to sell 200,000 a year -- 58% more than it sold with the current model last year -- but can build 300,000 as demand allows.

About half the trucks will be made at a plant that Toyota will open this fall in San Antonio.

“Toyota is adapting its portfolio to fit the U.S. market, and Americans still prefer larger vehicles,” said Rebecca Lindland, auto industry analyst at Global Insight economic forecasting in Lexington, Mass.

In the past, Toyota trucks were a bit on the soft side. They either were smaller and less rugged-looking than the competition or, like the RAV4 and Lexus RX 330 sport utility vehicles, were built on car-like platforms instead of the tougher frames used in conventional trucks.

Next month Toyota will deliver its FJ Cruiser, a $23,000 off-roading SUV that pays homage to the rugged Toyota Land Cruiser. The FJ also was designed in Newport Beach.

“It’s taken them until now to become fully competitive, but they have quietly become a strong truck company,” said analyst George Peterson, president of AutoPacific Inc. market research in Tustin.

While Toyota’s popular Prius gasoline-electric hybrid sedan gets plenty of buzz, in recent years the company has steadily introduced more trucks. This year it will offer a dozen models -- as many as Ford.

Including models sold by its Lexus division, Toyota last year sold 970,670 light trucks -- SUVs, pickups and minivans -- accounting for 43% of its U.S. sales. That marks a 50% increase from its truck sales in 2000 -- a huge boost in a period during which truck sales plummeted about 26% at Ford and 13% at Chrysler.

The new trucks are intended to help push Toyota toward its goal of a 15% share in the global market.

“They can’t get there without selling more trucks in the U.S.,” Lindland said.

But that push worries some longtime Toyota fans in the environmental movement, as the automaker’s overall fuel economy has dropped as it launched more and larger trucks.

Figures from the Environmental Protection Agency show that Toyota’s trucks, which achieved a record average of 26 miles per gallon in 1985, fell to 22.9 mpg for the 2005 model year. During the same span GM’s truck fuel economy stayed flat at 21 mpg, Chrysler’s rose slightly to 21.1 mpg and Ford’s remained flat at 20.2 mpg. Honda Motor Co., which doesn’t make a large pickup or SUV, has an average truck fuel economy of 24.8 miles per gallon.

“Building more pickups and SUVs is heading it in the wrong direction,” Roland Hwang, a Berkeley-based transportation analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of Toyota.

Mileage figures haven’t been released, but Toyota marketing chief Jim Farley hinted that the new V-8 engine for the ’07 Tundra would feature cutting-edge fuel-efficiency technologies. And because Toyota has such a strong image as a fuel-efficiency leader, a new truck with less-than-stellar mileage won’t do too much harm, said consumer analyst Rob Treganza of Iconoculture Inc. market research in Minneapolis.

Where motorists look at Ford or GM as primarily truck companies, they see “Toyota as an all-products provider whose big bonus is reliability, quality and longevity,” Treganza said. “They buy a Toyota truck to get the Toyota bonus.”

Analyst Peterson figures that’s bad news, in particular, for Ford. In 2007, he predicts, the Toyota Tundra will pull about 40,000 potential F-Series buyers from Ford, while a new generation of pickups from GM could take an additional 40,000. And Nissan is expected to increase the competition by adding a larger Titan model.

Toyota isn’t expected to stop with the new Tundra either. It may take a few years, but industry watchers expect to see a full-size hybrid version of the big Toyota pickup, as well as models with diesel engines.

“It’s like a piranha attack,” Peterson said. “No one competitor takes a big chunk from Ford, but when a lot of them are taking little nips, it could be deadly.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Solid sales sector

Number of large pickups sold by automakers in the U.S. in 2005

Ford F-Series: 901,463

Chevy Silverado: 705,981

Dodge Ram: 400,546

GMC Sierra: 229,488

Toyota Tundra: 126,259

Nissan Titan: 86,945

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Source: Times research