Toyota Once Tried And Failed To Convince Americans That Full-Size Pickup Trucks Should Be Smaller

It’s no secret that America is obsessed with the full-size pickup truck. Drive far enough outside of a city and you’ll find that the default option for many people is a beast from one of America’s Big Three. A little over three decades ago, Toyota knew this, but thought it could win the hearts of American buyers by making a slimmer, smarter truck. The Toyota T100 was a cool truck that didn’t really work, forcing Toyota to copy the big dogs.

The Toyota of today is a valid competitor with the Big Three in the big truck game. The Tundra is a big and burly vehicle capable of doing hard work or masquerading as a luxury car with a high towing capacity. It’s a style of truck that’s almost uniquely American. No matter if you order a Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado 1500, or Ram 1500, you can get something with loads of power, piles of toys, and capability that boggles the mind.

The Toyota Tundra cannot unseat the domestic offerings from the podium, but the American-designed and Texas-built truck holds its own in the marketplace. Certainly, Toyota has found success in selling a full-size pickup truck in ways that the likes of Nissan have not. Honda isn’t even trying to compete in this space. The Tundra, along with the Tacoma, gave Toyota a strong foothold in America’s truck market, but it wasn’t always like this.

Setting The Stage

Flip your calendars back to the 1980s and the automotive world was a very different place. Toyota notes that in 1980, Japan built 10 million vehicles. The country built so many vehicles that it became the world’s largest producer of cars, which was incredible given how America was considered to be the largest car market. Of Japan’s insane production volume of automobiles, 5.97 million were exported to other countries, with America being Japan’s favorite export destination.

But over in America, things were dire. The economy sank and America’s auto manufacturers struggled. In 1980, passenger car sales were down by 16 percent. However, the people who did buy cars turned towards imports. As a result, the number of Japanese cars sold in America rose by 9 percent that year. In contrast, Toyota writes, the Big Three were huge losers, sinking 21 percent in 1980. Even poor American Motors found itself in the red while Chrysler begged the feds for help.

The sinking of the American automotive industry led to widespread layoffs. Suddenly, everyone from the United Auto Workers to Congress was pointing fingers at Japan for selling attractive cars that American automakers couldn’t compete with. The UAW reportedly went so far as to blame Japan for the unemployment of its workers.

President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, and one of his cabinet’s first actions was convincing Japan that it should voluntarily limit exports to America to 1.6 million units. The Japanese government agreed.

Japan’s automotive industry responded in various ways [Ed Note: One way was building plants here in the U.S. -DT], such as flooding the market with new luxury cars like Infiniti and Lexus. One other method that kept Toyota’s presence healthy in America was selling tons of Hilux trucks, which were marketed here as the Truck and Pickup. Toyota had plenty of experience selling trucks in America with the FJ45 Land Cruiser and the previous Hilux, but there was a problem.

People who grew out of their compact Toyotas bought full-size domestic pickup trucks. Toyota was essentially leaving money on the table by not offering a step up from the Pickup. But there was one additional twist in that Toyota apparently had no idea how to make an American full-sized truck.

The Not Quite Full-Size

However, Toyota also couldn’t just ignore this. It was now the early 1990s and Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. was begging Toyota brass in Japan to give them a full-size. Sure, the compact truck sold well, but they didn’t want Detroit to have all of the fun with larger trucks.

As Automotive News writes, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Executive Vice President Bob McCurry figured he could convince Japan to make it happen. After all, it was his team that got the approval for the creation of Lexus in 1989. That worked out well, so he thought a full-size truck wasn’t going to be a big deal.

However, the executives in Japan didn’t see the point in taking the risk. It wasn’t like the Americans didn’t try, either. As the story goes, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. tried every trick in the book from presenting a mountain of market research to trying to get brass to drive an American pickup to see what all of the fuss was about. They even sent 10-gallon hats to Toyota brass to illustrate the kind of space American pickup owners wanted their cabs to have.

At the same time, there was also a competing study. As Car and Driver reported, Toyota engineers asked truck owners what they liked about their trucks. Americans told them that they loved capa­bility and reliability, but wished their trucks weren’t so darn huge. Toyota engineers figured that there could be a market of about 220,000 buyers per year for a full-size truck that had some girth taken out.

Ultimately, Japan did agree to give America a bigger truck. But this new truck wasn’t going to be a true full-size. It would end up falling between the likes of something like a Dodge Dakota and a Dodge Ram. Toyota saw it as making a smaller full-size truck, even though that sounds a bit like an oxymoron.

In fairness to Toyota, it’s not like Toyota had experience developing a proper full-size truck. As Automotive News writes, making a full-size truck isn’t as easy as scaling up a compact truck. Full-size trucks have parts made for heavier work and required factory tooling that Toyota didn’t have. Reportedly, there was also fear that directly copying the style of the full-size American truck could have been met with pushback from Detroit and the government.

So, it was settled. Toyota was going to sell a truck in America that was only sort of full-size.

Toyota’s plan was to do what Detroit wasn’t doing. Its truck would be smaller, yes, but big on space. How small are we talking? Well, a T100 measured in at 209.1 inches long and was equipped with an eight foot bed. In 1993, the year the T100 hit the market, the longest Dodge Dakota was 203.2 inches long. Meanwhile, the shortest 1993 Ford F-150 with an eight foot box was 213.3 inches. It wasn’t just a shorter length either. The Ford was 79 inches wide while the ‘Yota was 75.2 inches.

The T100 was also different under the skin. Remember how I said that Toyota didn’t have any full-size truck parts on hand? Well, the T100 used a similar front suspension and frame to the smaller Pickup. Rear wheel drive models had a double wishbone torsion bar front suspension while 4x4s had a Toyota exclusive independent front suspension. Leaf springs took up the rear and 4×4 models had their spring spans located above the rear axle for more clearance.

Toyota was also quirky when it came down to what was under the hood. Toyota’s American dealers demanded V8 power because that’s what American truck buyers crave. Toyota brass in Japan didn’t get it. Why would they put a V8 in this truck when they could get a V6 to make the same power? As Automotive News notes, Toyota thought the truck market worked just like the car market with everyone choosing all kinds of different engines. Japan didn’t quite realize that Americans craved V8s and sixes were considered to be the cheap option.

Still, when the T100 launched it came with a 3.0-liter V6. A 2.7-liter four cylinder and a 3.4-liter V6 would be offered, but the T100 galloped through its entire production run without a V8. Toyota’s pitch to Americans was that you didn’t need V8 power when the 150 HP pumped out by the lower engines or the 190 HP from the hotter 3.4-liter should have been good enough.

Toyota then boasted about the truck’s 20 mpg highway fuel economy and 24.3-gallon tank, saying that you could fill it up and forget about gas stations for a while.

Despite these compromises, Toyota wanted to win on smart features. This was a smaller truck, but the cab was still large enough to fit three cowboy hat-fitted adults abreast. The New York Times mentioned that Toyota also thought of nice little touches. The 4×4 versions of these trucks were jacked up sky-high. It was normal for trucks back then to not provide grab bars to help shorter drivers pull themselves in. But there were bars for the passenger. Toyota offered grab bars to both passenger and driver so everyone could take one for a spin.

Other neat carlike features included adjustable seatbelt mounts, cruise control on the steering wheel, a CD player, and carlike cupholders

Toyota didn’t stop there. Engineers made sure the cab was held to the same high quality standards that Toyota was known for by that point and that suspension I mentioned earlier was tuned to give more carlike handling. What the Toyota T100 lacked in size it attempted to make for in doing what the bigger trucks didn’t. Yet, the T100 also managed a 1,680-pound payload and up to a 5,000-pound towing capacity, so it could still do real truck stuff. Toyota, then very well-versed in off-roading, also equipped the 4x4s in beefy skid plates.

The Media Loved It, The Public Didn’t

All of this was good, but the market didn’t receive the truck well.

The problem wasn’t the media as reviewers did seem to like them. Peggy Spencer Castine from the New York Times enjoyed the smaller size:

Although Toyota describes the T100 as an intermediate, Toyota has sent it after the Big Three’s big boys. Some of its key interior dimensions compare favorably with the Dodge Ram and the Chevy C/K series. And this sleek V6 pony is agile enough to run circles around Detroit’s muscular V8 workhorses, two of which — the Ram and the ’97 Ford F-150 — I also drove.

Does one really need the 230 horsepower of a Ram V8 to drive to the supermarket? I had a hard time reining in the monster Dodge to stay under my neighborhood’s 25- mile-an-hour limit. And do you really need a truck so wide that it straddles your driveway? In a 1997 Ford F-150, I was afraid to back up in a busy school parking lot for fear I’d take out three cars and an untold number of children. The T100 is still a big truck — I had to reach down to get my burgers from a drive-through window. But it was a lot easier to slip into parking places.

Inside, the T100 ($28,349 as tested) was comfy and cozy, with plenty of storage spaces, serviceable cup holders and easy-to-use controls. In the Ram, with its huge center console and side mirrors the size of small televisions, I felt as if I were in the land of giants. At least the folks at Ford seem to have gotten the message: The F-150 includes some nice touches, like dual air bags and extra power outlets.

Popular Science called the T100 the “Best of What’s New” while J.D. Power praised the truck’s quality for multiple years. The legendary John Davis of MotorWeek offered his own take:

In that review, Davis noted that Toyota’s prospective buyers didn’t care for butch looks, so the T100 was given a gentle design reminiscent of the Pickup that came before it. Davis also noted that like a big truck, the T100 had no problems swallowing 4×8 plywood sheets between the wheel wells. MotorWeek praised the T100’s payload and towing capacity, but mentioned that its 12.6-second 60 mph acceleration time was so slow that actually carrying a heavy payload would be an “ordeal.”

Despite saying that there was a market of 220,000 people a year for a truck like this, Toyota expected to sell 60,000 T100s a year. The reason was two-fold. The truck was built in Japan, which meant it was subject to the 25 percent Chicken Tax. The factory that built the truck could only assemble so many trucks, anyway.

MotorWeek said the T100 started at $14,000 and if you wanted the hopped-up SR5, that set you back $16,000. Davis noted that these prices — thanks to the Chicken Tax — meant that the T100 was $3,000 more expensive than an equivalent F-150. So, you really had to want a T100 because you were paying more for physically less truck. Then there was just the problem of converting absurdly loyal American truck buyers away from their domestics and into an import.

Ultimately, MotorWeek concludes that the T100 is a bit of a hybrid. It’s sized closer to a mid-size truck and handles like a compact truck, but hauls like a full-size truck. However, Toyota’s choice to stick with light-duty components and the V6 engine means the truck can’t work as hard as a domestic. Some also didn’t like how there was only a single cab option at first.

Despite the positive reviews and awards, Toyota never came close to the 60,000 units a year expectation. It sold a third of that number in 1993 and fewer copies than that in 1994 when the first Xtracab launch. Toyota refreshed the model in 1995 but that didn’t work, either. The best year for sales was 1996, when Toyota moved around 38,000 units. However, that was a drop in the pond compared to Ford slinging 850,000 trucks that same year.

Toyota began to recognize its mistake early on. It answered the calls for a bigger cab, but didn’t have any quick solutions to the price or the engine. MotorWeek notes that Toyota planned to move production to America to save the T100 from the Chicken Tax as well as to get a V8 from a domestic automaker to solve that complaint.

Toyota’s response to the poor sales of the T100 was to make a larger successor, the T150.

This truck would eventually become known as the Tundra, but not before it went through its own nightmare of a development cycle. Automotive News notes that when Toyota first displayed the Tundra to dealers it had a V6. Dealers told Toyota to give it a V8 or don’t even bother. The Tundra did end up with a V8 and sales soared, but Toyota still received complaints about the first-generation Tundra being too small and not having the hauling capabilities of an American truck.

Toyota did eventually figure out how to make a truck for Americans, but it took a very long time. It did so by letting Americans take the reins in designing a truck. Finally, in 2006, Toyota launched the second-generation Tundra, a truck that was unapologetic in playing the same game as the trucks the Big Three were playing. This was the truck that those executives in Japan were scared about in 1993. But, it has since paid off.

Normally, I would call a story like the T100’s an Unholy Fail. But this time I don’t want to go there. By all accounts, it seemed that Toyota just had to learn how to make trucks the hard way. The T100 might have been a bit of a failure and proof that even mighty Toyota can have a miss, but it motivated Toyota to keep going back to the drawing board until it came out with something that worked. If anything, it’s a story reminding you that if you get knocked down, you can still get back up and keep on swinging.

(Images: Toyota, unless otherwise noted.)