Toyota May Sell Heavy Truck in U.S. - This IS a Big Deal

DETROIT December 15, 2003; Norihiko Shirouzu writing for Dow Jones reported that Toyota is considering a foray into America's heavy-duty pickup market with its own beefy three-quarter-ton pickup truck, attacking a highly profitable niche in the truck business dominated by Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG, Detroit's Big Three, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported.

The No. 1 Japanese auto maker is in the final phase of evaluating a move into the three-quarter-ton pickup market, which would put Toyota into competition with models such as the Ford F-250 and heavy-duty Chevy Silverado trucks. These trucks, beefier and more powerful than half-ton pickups, typically sell for more than $30,000.

The consideration expands the push by Japan's big three auto makers -- Toyota, Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. -- into the American light-truck market, long a bastion of big profit for the Detroit auto makers.

Mike Michels, a Toyota spokesman in Torrance, Calif., said the company is " considering" developing a three-quarter-ton pickup truck, but that nothing concrete has formally been decided. A senior executive said, meanwhile, that the company's U.S. sales arm is lobbying hard for a three-quarter-ton truck for sale in North America.

Toyota already has a full-size pickup truck called the Tundra, but the truck is considered to be too small and underpowered to be a threat to Detroit's pickup trucks. It plans to make the Tundra more competitive by making it bigger by 2006 or 2007. This month Nissan began selling the Titan, its first half-ton full-size truck. Honda is expected to start selling in the U.S. next year a new sport-utility-type truck, a cross between a pickup truck and a sport-utility vehicle.