Toyota Truck

The Toyota Truck is a compact economy pickup truck. A full sized version (T100 and Tundra) are available in the North American market.

For a detailed history of the technical engineering evolution of the Toyota Truck, please see Toyota Hi-Lux.

Toyota Pickups in the United States

The Toyota pickup truck first appeared in the United States in 1964 under the name of "Stout." The strange, utilitarian little truck wasn't a very fast seller. In 1969, Toyota improved the truck and rebranded it the "Hi-Lux." In the 1970s, inflation and a strong US dollar combined to make the Hi-Lux a popular choice. When the first Arab Oil Embargo was imposed, consumers realized that the little truck could get TWICE the fuel mileage (17 mpg estimated) of their bigger rival the Ford F-250 (8 mpg estimated).

By the mid-1980s, the United States was licking its economic wounds from two Arab oil embargoes, the runaway stagflation of the 1970s, and a recession. The sames pressures which were merely squeezing the American economy were crushing Detroit and the Big 3 automakers Ford, Chrysler (now DaimlerChrysler), and GM. The Big 3 had an additional burden of being poorly positioned in their product marketing mix (very few economy cars) and faced skyrocketing labor costs. Chrysler's Lee Iacocca had just finished begging Congress for loan guarantees to bail out the failing Chrysler corporation. The Big 3 along with the United Auto Workers union lobbied Congress to slap an import tariff on all imported pickup trucks entering the United States. This move was a direct attack on Toyota and to a lesser extent on Datsun (now called Nissan).

The Big 3 saw this as a way to eliminate a competitor which was doing a superior job of competing. The UAW saw this as a way to protect union jobs from cheaper foreign labor. The politicians saw this as a way to get votes from blue collar workers and to bolster the flagging economy at the same time. The only people hurt would be Toyota and the consumers who purchased their products. The net result was that the cost of importing a truck from Japan became so high that Toyota was no longer in a good position to compete.

To address this concern, Toyota formed a joint venture with General Motors (GM) in 1984 to build Toyota products in the US, for sale to the US market, using unionized UAW labor. The venture was named New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. or "NUMMI" (pronounced NUMI) for short. They first plant was built in Fremont, California just miles away from a recently closed Ford assembly plant in Milpitas, California.

At the new plant, they built the US version of the Hi-Lux pickup, GEO (Chevrolet) products, and a US version of the Toyota Corolla.

Import Truck Tariff

(gloss the history of the import truck tariff, link to trade analysts, 4% tariff for cab-chassis, 25% for complete truck, Euro trade war with Volkswagen, Toyota's work-around, UAW & Big 3's lobbying to close the Cab-chassis loophole, etc.)

4x4 Revolution

By the mid 1970s, it was clear that the popularity of 4 wheel drive vehicles was more than just a passing fad. In 1978, Toyota began selling a 4x4 version of its popular Hi-Lux pickup truck in the US and Canada. Sales were swift.

Trekker & 4Runner

Toyota and the Winnebago Company formed a joint venture to develop a mini-truck version of the 4 wheel drive recreational vehicles which we now call SUVs. Toyota supplied bare pickup truck chassises without a bed and Winnebago created a all-fiberglass body to go on the rear. This vehicle was called the Trekker [1] and was the predecessor of the Toyota 4Runner. The production run with Winnebago lasted from late 1979 until late 1983.

Concurrent to the Trekker production run, Toyota was working with other vendors on similar prototypes called the Toyota Wolverine and Toyota Blazer. These very rare trucks are similar to the Trekker, but have subtle differences.

In 1983, Toyota took over production of the Trekker and renamed it the 4Runner which first hit the streets in October, 1983 for the 1984 model year. Toyota jettisoned the fiberglass body design in favor of steel, but they retained the removable fiberglass top.

Tacoma

The Toyota Tacoma superseded the Hilux in 1995. Toyota created the Tacoma to solve two problems:

• 1. Toyota needed a compact truck which could dodge the import truck tariff. A truck made in the US such as the Tacoma fulfilled that purpose nicely.

• 2. Toyota needed a name which would position the Toyota product squarely against their most important rival- the Chevrolet S-10 Sonoma.

The Tacoma is made in the United States at the New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. plant in Fremont, California. Although the Hi-Lux is still in production worldwide, it's no longer generally available in the United States and Canada.

http://www.toyotaoffroad.com/Articles/History/History_truck.htm

See Toyota Tacoma

Full-Sized T100 and Tundra

(gloss T-100 and Tundra)

Quality

(Gloss Deming TQM, statistical QC, and JIT practices)

The Toyota Truck owes, in large part, its phenomenal reliability to the work of W._Edwards_Deming. Deming introduced statistical science and methodology to Toyota allowing Toyota to trounce the Big 3 automakers in quality. This methodology is today referred to as Total Quality Management or TQM.

See Also

• Toyota
• Toyota_Hi-Lux
• Toyota Truck Maintenance
• Toyota Truck Service Data
• Pickups
• 4x4
• List of Toyota vehicles
• List of Toyota engines
• List of Toyota Transmissions
• EPA 2004 fuel economy report (Toyota)
• Toyota T100 – larger size pickup truck; predecessor to Tundra
• Toyota Tacoma
• Toyota 4Runner
• Toyota Tundra

External Links

• http://www.toyota.com
• Toyota.com : Vehicles : 4Runner. Toyota's US 4Runner website.
• History of the 4Runner from off-road.com.
• 4Runner History from toyotaoffroad.com.
• History of the Toyota 4Runner is the first of four pages describing the history of the 4Runner
• http://www.cato.org/dailys/07–06–03.html Cato Institute brief on import truck tariff
• http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/briefs/tbp-017es.html "The Case for Abolishing the 25% Import Truck Tariff"
• http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/briefs/tbp-017.pdf FreeTrade.org white paper on the Import Truck Tariff