Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
There's a bit of chicken and egg going on here. People can't buy small pickups if the manufacturer chooses not to build them. Consider Toyota, which currently makes a mid-size pickup (Tacoma) and a large one (Tundra). The mid-size consistently outsells the large one:
So people do buy the smaller truck. Couple that with the number of smaller '80s Toyotas still on the road, and I don't see how you can argue that there isn't a market for small trucks.
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You just said the Tacoma was a mid size truck, but used it in your argument that because the Tacoma sells more than the Tundra that people want small trucks, even though neither of them are small. Using your own logic, the Tacoma cant be considered small, so should be excluded from the already paltry small truck sales figures. So if you only count the ACTUAL small trucks...Colorado, Canyon, Frontier and Ranger...the numbers are pathetic.
Another point I'd like to submit here is, there is a reason why the Ranger, for example, overseas has been redesigned and has a signifigant investment into their development...It's because they SELL there. Ford won't bring them here because they can't sell enough to make any money on them. It's cheaper just to keep cranking out sad little outdated Rangers and giving them to Hertz and Enterprise.
And small trucks are for sale, the Colorado, Frontier and Ranger are both pretty damn small, but they sell like crap.
I didn't say there was "no" market at all for small trucks, but consider that every company not named Toyota loses money on compact truck production due to very poor sales figures. In fact, the only reason the Ranger, Colorado and Dakota exist at all is to meet CAFE standards, and a large chuck of domestic small truck sales are fleet sales made at a loss to the manufacturer.
Now if gas gets up to $5 or more a gallon and stays there, the story will certainly change.