There was a time, not too terribly long ago, when Toyota – and many of its rivals – built and sold compact pickups. Those smaller haulers largely died off over the years, however, as Americans gravitated more toward larger, mid-size and full-size pickups, though the Ford Maverick debuted for the 2022 model year to tremendous success. Despite this, the Maverick only has one rival, currently – the Hyundai Santa Cruz – though Toyota has also been rumored to be mulling the idea of creating its own new compact pickup. Now, another report has surfaced indicating that this might be the case.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, Toyota is once again looking into the possibility of offering its own compact pickup to compete with the Maverick in the U.S., a product that its dealers have been asking for over the past few years. “We’re looking at it,” said Mark Templin, Toyota U.S. COO, though executives declined to provide details regarding where such a product stands in the development process, nor when we could expect to see it launch.
“We could really do well in that segment, so we’re trying to do it,” Cooper Ericksen, a senior vice president in charge of planning and strategy at Toyota Motor North America, said in a separate interview. “It’s a matter of timing.”
Rumors that Toyota was mulling the idea of making some sort of compact pickup first surfaced in 2022, and in the spring of 2024, Ford Authority spotted the Japanese automaker benchmarking both a Maverick and a Santa Cruz. However, just a couple of months later, Ted Ogawa, CEO of Toyota Motor North America, shot down the notion that the Japanese automaker was considering a compact pickup at that time – though since then, the Maverick has continued to lull buyers away from that brand, as well as Honda.
Comments
If they do it, I hope Toyota has a better set of designers than the ones who did the gawdawful new Tacoma.
The previous Tacoma had a very masculine/muscular look to it which helped make it so popular. Now it’s just a boxy truck with one of those awful new Toyota faces glued on the front.
Interesting info from the Bloomberg/Detroit News article. Apparently the Santa Cruz is really floundering. It proves that when buyers buy a truck, they want it to look like, well, a “truck.”
This is something Ford got right and Hyundai didn’t understand.. the sales prove it w the Hyundai’s sales falling 13% while the Mav’s soared. Same for Honda and the Ridgeline. They never focus fully on it being a “truck” and therefore never earn the cred of being a “truck.”
From the article:
“With a starting price of $28,145, Ford sold 131,142 Mavericks in the United States last year, up 39% from the previous year. It offers the truck in gas-only or hybrid versions. Hyundai’s Santa Cruz sport utility truck, which starts at $28,750, saw 2024 sales in the United States fall 13% to 32,033.”
Seems that the Santa Cruz is either dead-in-the-water or in need of a major re-vamp w those sales numbers
Interestingly, the second-generation Honda Ridgeline is doing better than the first generation, at least in part because the new one looks more truck-like. The flying-buttress C-pillar failed to copy the Chevy Avalanche convincingly, and the current upright one actually makes it look like a truck. Not bad for a bunch of coupe utilities, AKA Rancheros.
Give us a smaller cab and a 6’ box a4.5 bed is useless ,one can add topper camper shell cool little week end camper no need for a roof top tent.
Maverick still to much over 30k with taxes for a cheapy little truck that it was when it came out 19 and change was great price not now anymore.
The only things that would get me to give up my maverick hybrid would be a phev version with good milage. The 2nd advantage they could consider to woo customers would be a slightly larger bed.