2015 Toyota Tundra Regular Cab Option Discontinued?
Tim Esterdahl | Feb 19, 2014 | Comments 17
Tundraheadquarters.com just received word, from a credible source, that the 2015 Toyota Tundra will not offer a regular cab. While regular cab sales have been on the decline, new CAFE regulations and tiny profits from this cab style are helping to spur the end. Overall, this news isn’t unexpected.
THQ has just received word that Toyota will drop the regular cab option.
The regular cab pickup has been a staple offering for decades and has become somewhat synomous with fleet customers and drag racers. Yet, this customer base have been shrinking with many fleet customers moving up to larger cabs since the price difference is becoming minimal. Most manufactures agree that the most popular pickup configuration is a crew cab with regular cab accounting for a very small percentage.
We told you back in 2011 that several manufactures suggested then that the regular cab could be on the cutting block. The economics of production are such that there is very little difference between producing a regular cab and double cab. In truth, every new truck announcement these days seems to be met with speculation if this year, is the year, that the regular cab goes away.
Working against regular cab pickups are several things:
- Popularity
- Manufacture costs equal to or similar to double cab
- New CAFE regulations that measure by footprint. The smaller footprint of a regular cab, regular bed truck mean it must get better fuel economy than a larger double or crew cab. Manufactures and consumers don’t seem interested in a more expensive regular cab.
On the flip side of this news is by dropping production of this cab style, Toyota could possibly expand production of other trim lines and/or models. As we have been hearing for months and months, Toyota has a capacity issue and this would certainly alleviate some of it.
Toyota told us, “Toyota does not comment on future product. Therefore, we have nothing to announce at this time regarding the future of the Tundra regular cab.”
What do you think? Will the regular cab loss matter much?
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Filed Under: TundraHeadquarters.com
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no skin off my back as with my truck being a work truck, vacation truck, weekend cruiser truck, family hauling truck, I am crew cab or nothing customer for now.
I was more happy to hear most offering larger beds with the crewcabs, maybe toyota can do that now. Crewmax with 6’4″ or whatever bed would be nice option for many
This is no surprise. For those who need contractor type trucks, they will be forced to go the Ford, GM and RAM which is what they already have.
Toyota won’t earn enough to be in this market.
They will earn plenty, this isn’t the 70’s and any contractor worth his salt isn’t driving a regular cab. People who want quality will get a Toyota and the people who don’t know any better can continue to be delusional and continue with the big 3.
Scott,
” any contractor worth his salt isn’t driving a regular cab” what does that mean?
Comcast, AT&T, Schlumberger, Halliburton, I could list a hundred more, they buy loads of standard cab long bed trucks from Ford, GM and RAM. These are all billion dollars corporations, do you claim the are not worth their salt? Not to mention municipal fleets. Western ranchers who drive in mud on a daily basis, they all depend on standard work trucks. Contractors need to make money and keep it not waste it on fake leather seat trucks.
Then again any office worker worth his salt likely drives a nice leather sofa with 4WD and never gets his hands or his truck dirty.
Try again.
Not sure about the Western ranchers needing a regular cab. I spend a lot of time in WY/NE and those ranchers are all moving away from regular cabs. In fact, the only regular cabs I see are really old. The newer trucks are all extended cabs.
-Tim
Your are right, but why are they moving away from them? They are very hard to find. I still see a fair number of standard trucks in fleets. In my case, I came very close to being pushed up to an extend cab truck because I could not find what I was looking for but, for my use, the extra 3 feet is just too long for some tight locations. My house in on a hill side lot with a steep driveway which has a U turn at the bottom. It’s difficult to turn around a standard length truck the extra 30 inches makes it worse and I can’t get by with a short bed truck.
You would have to admit that we are being pushed to buy what provides a higher margin to the dealers and manufactures and I understand that.
My point is that the working class who need low cost trucks to get a job done are losing options. Some need the option of lower cost trucks for certain applications. I would also question the wisdom of evaluating a potential contractor based on how cool his truck is. Not smart business in my view but that’s another issue.
Larry,
Yes, the cheap truck is going away. However, I’m just not certain it is that big of a deal. For example, I went on Toyota.com and used their build feature. For starters, I could only get the regular cab in the SR trim level and none of the others. Then, the base price, 4×2, 4.0L engine, etc… for a regular cab was $27,195 and for the double cab it was $27,810. The difference is only a few hundred dollars. My build comparison was for the standard bed and looking at it, I could get the long bed on either cab configuration. So, I presume, I could get a double cab, long bed for just a few hundred dollars more than I could get a regular cab with a long bed. If I was a contractor, I would go with the larger truck for more storage options. My two cents.
-Tim
I’m in same boat as BB, and agree with Larry.
Sadly, I hoped that when kids were older, I could have a sporty reg cab short box that CAFE has targeted as anti-environment.
Room on assembly line may be just enough for a HD, 3/4 or 1 ton chassis with DoubleCab body… but I think addition of a new drive option for Tundra with FE as focus like diesel to compete with the big C crowd or hybrid (gas or diesel) may be more likely.
2014 reg cab may be a collector…
Fine, cancel the regular cab but give me my 6 1/2′ bed crewmax tundra.
Am sure at most 1 in 100 around here are just regular cabs, but if I was single and on a fixed budget, I’d go cheap V6 route regular cab 2wd bare bones truck 8′ bed.
I’ve only seen two regular cab Tundras ever. (2007 and up) And only rarely do I see a regular cab from the big three in my neck of the woods.
Sure, government agencies and big companies buy them for cheap fleet vehicles because they are not used as private people use their cars. How many of those fleet rigs are hauling kids or dogs?
I don’t think this is a big deal at all. Why build what nobody wants?
Black 2007 SR5 2wd V8 short box reg cab, thats the stuff. My keeper.
Well, that narrows down my choice of trucks in the future.
I very rarely see a newer regular cab truck made by any manufacturer on the road now. Even the fleet trucks that I see locally are going to either extended/double or crew cab now. I think the only ones that I have seen lately were a few Dodge/Ram, and one Chevy the other day.
We don’t see many that’s for sure. I wonder if it won’t be long before the big three will also drop them.
For my needs they start to get too long. Over the week end a wind storm took down a 100 foot tall douglas fir tree. It crushed the back end of my 2006 truck. The tailgate, right side panel and some damage to the left side. It will be thousands to repair.
It took months to find a standard cab long bed with a manual transmission.
I am seriously thinking of putting a flat bed on it. With a custom built cap it will yield much more usable cargo space. The steel or aluminum will be heavier then the sheet material used on the side panels so rust out should be eliminated.
It will also be ugly so I won’t need worry about anyone stealing it.
The flat beds even come in longer lengths. I would still prefer a standard cab and 11 foot of cargo space in the back.
So will the market for the original standard stuck survive, I am thinking it might not.
I think this supports the fact that we are seeing people begin to use their trucks for everything and not just work.