Yahoo Autos New Toyota Tacoma, Ranger, Colorado/Canyon fight for midsize truck dominance
Sam Wedll has been driving his Toyota Tacoma pickup on the rugged roads of Northern California for seven trouble-free years, racking up almost 100,000 miles, so he’s interested in the redesigned version of the truck coming later this year. He paid $34,000 for his truck in 2016, loading it with plenty of options. He’s eyeing the new gas-electric hybrid Toyota Motor Corp. is going to offer, but Wedll, who does his own repairs, isn’t interested in paying luxury prices.
“The hybrid is pretty interesting to me because I like the idea of the fuel efficiency,” says Wedll, 47, a casino operations manager in Blue Lake, California. “I’m just trying to save some costs wherever possible.”
The Tacoma, known as the Taco to its legions of loyalists, is the leader of the pack in midsize pickups, one of the fastest-growing auto markets of the past decade. With outdoorsy weekend warriors and do-it-yourselfers looking for a truck that could fit in their garage, sales of midsize pickups more than doubled from 2010 to 2020. General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co., which abandoned the market segment when sales slowed early this century, returned with new trucks to take on the Tacoma, which has dominated the medium truck market for almost two decades.
Although it's easy to predict that the most lushly appointed versions of the new Taco could approach $50,000 (prices won’t be announced until later this year), Toyota insists it isn’t backing away from budget buyers even as it rolls out fancier trucks. The current Tacoma starts at $28,030, and the company says affordability is critical to its success. In fact, Toyota will continue to offer the Taco with an old-school stick shift. The Tacoma controls 42% of the midsize truck market and outsells Ford’s offering 4 to 1. That’s a role reversal from the full-size pickup market, where Ford’s F-Series has ruled the road for 46 years.
Tacoma sales in the U.S. surpassed 237,000 last year, more than twice the number of GM’s No. 2-ranked Chevrolet Colorado, according to consultant LMC Automotive. But as growth in the overall segment slows, the midsize market is developing into more of a turf war, with manufacturers vying for the sweetest highest-margin spots.
“This segment is likely past its prime growth spurt,” says Jeff Schuster, president of the Americas for LMC Automotive. That helps explain why all the big manufacturers are fielding redesigned trucks this year — often with more features and richer sticker prices — as they try to solidify their position in a highly profitable market where average prices have risen 27% in the past five years and now stand at almost $43,000, according to automotive researcher Edmunds.com Inc.
“The new frontier has shifted from SUVs to trucks,” says Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at Edmunds. “We’re seeing automakers try different concepts and executions to try to grow volume.”
Higher pricing is becoming a hallmark for this vehicle segment once known for attracting penny pinchers. Later this summer, Ford is coming out with a high-performance, 405-horsepower Raptor version of its Ranger pickup that starts at $57,000, an eye-watering price for a midsize pickup. Toyota’s first redesign of the Tacoma in eight years also includes an off-road model dubbed Trail Hunter that’s expected to explore new heights in pricing.
