Tundra Caters To “Sophisticated” Buyers?
Jason Lancaster | Oct 11, 2010 | Comments 11
The Truth About Cars (TTAC) usually does a nice job of presenting ideas that aren’t necessarily “main stream” automotive news, and for that they should be recognized. However, their recent blog post The Toyota Tundra: The Quiche Truck is a bit of a blunder. Not only does it mis-represent some key facts about the Tundra, it seems to recycle some commonly held views that don’t match reality. Here’s where it falls apart:
1. The 2nd gen Tundra is incorrectly characterized as a failed attempt to win sales from the “domestics.” The Tundra’s best year was 2007, when Toyota sold just less than 200k units. 2008 started off well, but then the economy ground to a halt…and the Tundra’s best shot at grabbing any momentum faded. Ford brought out a new F150 and Dodge brought out a new Ram in 2009, and now the Tundra is one of the older truck designs on the market.
HOWEVER, despite this series of events, the Tundra is gaining market share and may even beat Chrysler-Fiat sales of the Ram 1500…how is any sort of growth in these circumstances considered a failure?
2. Failing to meet outrageous expectations doesn’t equal actual failure. One of the analysts quoted in the TTAC article stated that “We had expected Toyota would do what they did with cars and take over the (truck) market.” This was a commonly shared expectation – a lot of people at Toyota assumed the same thing – but the reality is that truck sales are won one owner at a time. Toyota’s “frustratingly slow” share growth is the norm, not the exception.
3. Toyota’s buyers may be more sophisticated than domestic buyers, but that’s not a bad thing. The crux of the TTAC article is that Toyota can’t attract the “Joe Sixpacks” of the truck market. This is funny for a few reasons:
- Saying that Toyota buyers are more sophisticated is also saying that Ford, GM, and Ram buyers are less sophisticated. While this type of generality isn’t useful, it still makes me laugh out loud.
- Sophisticated buyers have always fueled Toyota’s growth. When Toyota was selling the Corolla in the 1970’s, it took someone with some sophistication to consider a Toyota rather than a Ford, Chevy, Dodge, etc. In those days, the conventional wisdom was that “Jap cars were crap cars.” Today? The Camry is America’s best-selling car.
When the domestic buyers become more “sophisticated” and start using high-speed internet (an example given in the article), Toyota is going to have a leg up. A lot of domestic truck owners think that Toyota can’t build a real truck, but that sounds an awful lot like what people used to say about Toyota in the 70’s.
Calling the Tundra a “quiche” truck is silly considering that it’s still one of the most powerful trucks on the road, it still has the best resale value of any half-ton, and compared to many trucks with similar equipment, the Tundra costs less. If being smart with money and buying the most American pickup on the market makes Tundra owners quiche eaters, so be it.
Filed Under: Auto News
Couldn’t agree more with this article – good job!
Me and another guy in our small town of 1200 people are the only tundra owners that I know of. If the so called ‘less sophisticated’ Ford and Chevy mainly owners wised up, they would see that the tundra stacks up very well against the domestic 3 in all areas now except diesel 3/4-1 ton pickups. This could not be sad, in my opinion, prior to 2007 when the tundra was not a full size 1/2 ton truck with a big enough motor in it to compete. I worked for GM for 6 long hard years before they closed down and this is coming from a guy who is not AT ALL sophisticated, just common sense mainly, and after buying GM 1/2 tons since 1990 exclusively, I finally wised up and made an ‘educated’ decision to take the leap onto Toyota finally especially since the GM bankruptcy bailout occurred and leaves a really bad taste in my mouth for it. No longer am I GM ‘proud and owner loyalty garbage’ brainwashed. I’m open to new car mfgs. even Kia and Hyundai if and when that time comes to buy a different vehicle as well as others should be. A guy at work says he will never buy a toyota because it is ‘jap crap’ and I shut him up since he is brainwashed into the domestic 3 being ‘all American this and that’ and tell him my Tundra is made in USA with more American made parts which is more than I can say about all of my former GM trucks bought. That usually shuts him up for awhile anyways.
mk – That’s funny – the whole “American” pickup argument is just silly…glad to hear you silenced a critic. I agree that 07′ was Toyota’s first attempt at a real pickup, and I thank you for the compliment.
Anyone who has consistently read TTAC, knows this site is crap. It’s nearly always praise Toyota (good or bad) and bash the domestics (good or bad). Most their articles are “fluff” stories anyways, with rarely any substance. Either way, I no longer read their garbage and usually laugh when someone references them.
Anyways regarding your article.
1) It all depends on how you look at failure. The Tundra is considered a failure as sales have consistently been under the 200K per year. I’m sure people would say the F150 was a failure if it didn’t live up to it’s sales expectation. Or even the Camry for example if sales of a new model didn’t meet expectations. Also, Toyota spent a lot of money building this truck and most likely having a hard time recouping their investment. Toyota also built a new factory in San Antonio just for the Tundra. Because the Tundra wasn’t moving, they brought over the Tacoma to utilize the time the factory was idle. You can use the economy, which is all well and good. But it looks like some other full-size truck sales have bounced back much stronger and also didn’t have the nearly 50% decline in sales month over month, year over year like the Tundra had for a moment. So it depends on how you look at it from a failure point of view. I’m not calling the Tundra a failure, but it’s far from a victory as well.
2) This is just TTAC trying to cover their tracks for praising the Tundra and some of the outragous articles they wrote about how the Tundra would rule the market. They are just trying to make themselves look better with this statement.
3) And this just proves my point about how much hogwash TTAC is. I’d love to see the market research they did for this. Just like most TTAC articles, it’s another “Me think” with no factual data. I’d really like to know how they came up with all this BS.
That TTAC article was very lame. Tundra owners fly more often than ride in their trucks? Don’t own guns? Where did that guy come from? Most Tundra owners I know use their trucks for everything. The best thing I can state to that guy my next door neighbor and anyone else in the big 3 arena is to make sure you have metric tools. Which he found out with his Chevy Suburban. Yes I loaned him my craftsman metric tools. I had to explain to him why his GM had metric too.
Mickey: Wow, we agree! The article was lame, just fluff to attract readers and site hits. And who knows where they got their data from. Completely useless article in my opinion.
Haha it’s funny about the fly more than drive comment! All the miles on my Tundra came from driving between Houston and Northern California. Unfortunately, now I fly 2 days out of each week for work but the first thing I’m trying to do when I get home is run some errands in the Tundra. And I don’t know what they’re talking about when they say “sophisticated” because I see so many different types of drivers in Tundras – men, women, young, older, and definitely a lot of them as work vehicles too.
Justin – I agree that the Tundra didn’t meet sales expectations – and I certainly wouldn’t call this level of sales performance “victorious” – but I don’t think it’s a failure. To me, failure implies that the truck didn’t maintain or improve share. Considering that Toyota is selling more Tundras in 2010 than they did in 2005 – despite the truck market being nearly half the size – is proof the 2nd gen Tundra was a step in the right direction.
You’ll get no argument from me that Toyota didn’t make their money back yet on that plant in San Antonio. The amazing thing is? I’ll bet they’re expanding that plant soon…they simply don’t have enough production capacity to meet total Tundra+Tacoma demand when the truck market rebounds in 2014.
Why in 2014 the truck demand rebounding?
Part of the reason, although I am speculating and not 100% sure, on why the TX plant does not have enough production capacity to meet demand is because Toyota is smart not like GM and Ford and Dodge having say the ext. cabs built in Canada in 1 plant, the crew cabs built in Mexico in another plant, and say the regular cabs built yet in another plant somewhere probably overseas as well. At least I give Toyota credit for I think building most, if not all, the body style tundras in 1 plant as it should be. Easier to control inventory, parts, body changes, and problems surfacing to fix easier, if all in 1 location for all body styles.
mk – The 2014 rebound projection is based on both economic indicators and the fact that a lot of people can’t put off new truck purchases too long…but who knows. If gas hits $5 a gallon in 2014, I don’t see anything rebounding too much.
As for the production notes, you’re absolutely right – Toyota could build more trucks if they had more truck plants. In 2007, Toyota built Tundras in both Indiana and Texas. Today, it’s just Texas…and the Texas plant is basically “half sized” now that Toyota is building both the Taco and Tundra together.
I expect Toyota will have to add some workers at San Antonio in the next year or two – the Tundra and Tacoma are both going to see sales growth, and the plant’s nearly at capacity right now.
I do agree that if Toyota had more plants to produce the Tundra, they could manufacture more trucks. Problem is, the Tundra wasn’t meeting expectations, Tundra’s were sitting on lots, so Toyota purposely dialed down 2/3 of the production. I’m unsure since the truck market is slowly rebounding if Toyota has since or plans to up that production amount.
From my understanding, Toyota intended to move all Tundra production to the TX plant, ending IN production, from the get go. And of course, it was Toyota’s decision to move the Tacoma to the TX plant to fill the 2/3 void.
So if Toyota can’t fill demand for either of their trucks, they will find themselves in a dilemma. It was a wise business decision when the market wasn’t there for trucks. Now with the market rebounding, will simply adding another shift cover the demand, or will they need another facility? They can’t go back to IN, since they’ve starting building other vehicles there (is it the Sienna?) in place of the Tundra. And I can’t ever see them re-openning the NUMMI facility. So Toyota may have a problem.
I could potentially see the Tundra having significant sales growth in the near future, but not so sure about the Tacoma. There just isn’t much of a market for compact/mid-size trucks these days. Add up the top 4 compact/mid-size trucks sales for the year (Tacoma, Ranger, Frontier & Colorado), and they barely eclipse the entire Ram lineup of trucks. The Tacoma has seen a 9% drop in sales from last year, Ranger a 2.5% drop, and Colorado a 33% drop. Only the Frontier is showing improvement compared to last year, with a 42% bump. All full size trucks are seeing a year over year sales increase, except for the Ram. But even then, the Ram is only down 1.6%.
http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2.....ales-.html
And speaking of mid-size trucks, I wish Ford would bring the T6 Ranger to the states to compete. But with the current state of compact/mid-size trucks, it is most likely a good business decision not to, since this is turning into a niche market. Now I question some of the styling aspects of the T6, mostly the taillights and the front clip. But I like the sounds of the motor and the 6-spd man. tranny. Now the Mazda version, is HORRIBLE in the style dept.
http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2.....ebuts.html
http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2.....truck.html
Justin – I’ve been told by Toyota dealers that Tacoma sales are down because the truck has been hard to get – the shift in production has meant a lot fewer trucks are available. I’ve also been told that sales are down because 2009 was so awesome.
I’m not sure if that is all true – the Frontier is climbing which makes me think it’s stealing some Taco sales – but I agree the compact truck market is getting smaller. However, don’t fall into the trap of comparing Ram sales to Taco sales…the Ram sales number includes the very successful 2500/3500 HD. In fact, were it not for the sales growth of the 2500/3500, Ram sales might be down more like 10% this year.
Toyota can probably push 250k trucks out of Texas without expanding, which means they have enough capacity to meet demand for the next 2-3 years (but they’ll need to add another shift at some point). After that, I’m not sure…it’s a good question.
The other thing to keep in mind with mid-size pickups is the new emphasis on car-based trucks. The Scion/Prius pickup and the new Dodge Dakota are both going to try to attack the market with high-mileage alternatives to bigger pickups…but you know how I feel about that! The prospects seem dim in my eyes, but I guess we’ll see.
The T6 looks great – I think Ford is taking a bit of a gamble moving their Ranger customers into V6 F150’s, but that new V6 is dynamite, so it may be a great move. If F150 sales expand in place of Ranger sales, Ford will look really smart. Otherwise, they’ll have handed a nice little segment to Toyota, Nissan, and Jeep.