Toyota is reportedly serious about offering a smaller, potentially car-based ute which might slot in under its existing pickups.
“We’re it,” Toyota USA chief operating officer Mark Templin told Bloomberg.
“We could really do well in that segment, so we’re attempting to do it,” said Cooper Ericksen, a senior vice chairman in command of planning and strategy at Toyota Motor North America, in a separate interview. “It’s a matter of timing.”
It’s unclear whether Toyota’s more compact ute would have petrol, hybrid or electric power.
Nonetheless, Bloomberg reports Toyota engineers were spied testing the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz – each car-based unibody utes, unlike Toyota’s body-on-frame Tacoma and HiLux – near its technical centre within the US state of Michigan last yr.
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A smaller ute would slot into the corporate’s US lineup under the Tacoma, which replaced the HiLux – known there because the Pickup – back in 1995.
The present Tacoma is a more recent vehicle than our HiLux, riding on the TNGA-F ladder platform that’s shared with models just like the Prado and offering a turbocharged four-cylinder petrol-electric hybrid powertrain.
By launching rival for the Maverick (pictured above) and Santa Cruz, Toyota could offer US buyers a more cost-effective ute. While it could not have quite the extent of off-road and towing capability because the HiLux or Tacoma, it could offer a more car-like driving experience.
The Hyundai Santa Cruz has been a reasonably regular if not enormous seller within the US, with 32,033 sales last yr, but sales of the Ford Maverick rose 39 per cent to exceed 100,000 annual units for the primary time.
The ultimate tally was 131,142 units, which pushed it well past the Ford Ranger. Ford sold 46,205 Rangers within the US in 2024, placing it third in its segment and well behind the top-selling Tacoma (pictured above), which posted 192,813 sales.
This mooted recent Toyota ute would seem like different to the HiLux Champ launched in Southeast Asia, which is a boxy, ladder-frame, more back-to-basics counterpart to the HiLux that undercuts it on price.
Toyota has also confirmed it’ll launch an electrical ute in Europe by 2026, potentially pointing to a production version of the unibody EPU electric ute concept (above) revealed on the 2023 Tokyo motor show.
There have also been reports out of South America that Toyota will launch a car-based, hybrid-powered ute in Brazil in 2027 resembling the EPU concept.
Whether this vehicle can be a Latin American-only product – similar to unibody utes just like the Ram Rampage and Chevrolet Montana – or be moreover offered in North America and other markets stays unclear.
This Article First Appeared At www.carexpert.com.au
