The Japanese goofed–big time.
“The automotive story of the decade of the ’90s absolutely is the failure of Japan to recognize a shift in consumer preferences to trucks and sport-utility vehicles. It amazes me,” says Jac Nasser, president of Ford Motor Co.’s automotive operations.
Nasser has right to be a little caustic about the competition. The full size F-Series Ford pickup is the best-selling truck in the industry. And the Ford Explorer is the best-selling compact sport-utility, the Ford Expedition the best-selling full-size sport-utility and the Ford Ranger the best-selling compact truck.
But the Japanese are trying to make up for lost time. Toyota, for example, is unveiling a prototype of its ’99 Toyota T150 pickup truck at the Chicago Auto Show.
The T150 is the long-awaited full-size, V-8 powered truck that the Japanese have avoided bringing to a market dominated by the Big Three and the Ford F-Series, Chevrolet C/K Series and Dodge Ram.
And, he says, the Japanese also dilly-dallied when it came to SUVs, as Explorer, Chevrolet Blazer and Jeep Grand Cherokee dominate that market.
Sure, the Japanese have the Toyota 4Runner, Nissan Pathfinder, Isuzu Rodeo, Honda Passport and Mitsubishi Montero, but only after the U.S. automakers had a lock on the market. And to get to market cheaply, Passport is a Rodeo bought from Isuzu with a Honda name badge on it.
Toyota and Nissan also compete against the Ranger, Chevy S-10 and Dodge Dakota, but not from a position of power.
Two areas where the U.S. automakers may have dallied, however, are in full-size luxury and small economy sport-utes.
Chrysler has no full-size luxury sport-ute and reportedly won’t until 2002, when it comes up with a Grand Wagoneer built off the Ram truck platform. Ford just added Expedition and Navigator. Cadillac’s first comes out this fall, a Tahoe carrying the Caddy crest.
Then, too, the Japanese read the demand for small sport-utes before the U.S. automakers did. Just about every copy of the small Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, Subaru Forester, Suzuki Sidekick (and soon the Isuzu Amigo as well as a Nissan sport-ute) is sold quickly. Jeep has the Wrangler and Chevy the Tracker, but the Japanese dominate that market segment. And Tracker is a Sidekick with a Chevy name badge.
Some argue that the Japanese spent so much time and money on luxury cars at Lexus, Infiniti and Acura that they gave short shrift to trucks and SUVs, other than to rush luxury versions of their compact sport-utes to market.
While the Japanese built luxury sport-utes off compact SUVs, Ford built the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator off the F-Series truck platform and is outselling its Japanese competition by a wide margin.
Light trucks–pickups, sport-utes and mini-vans–account for 50 percent of all vehicle sales and are one of the industry’s biggest profit draws.
“We’re starting to see happen with the Japanese now in the late ’90s what I thought we’d see in the early ’90s,” Nasser said in an interview. “It’s a mystery to me how far they were off the mark with this significant trend.
“(Toyota) will create more interest in the truck market and that can only mean more energy and more creativity in a market where we are clearly the leader,” Nasser said.
“I’m not terribly happy with a competitor taking our nomenclature and using it that way (T150 versus F-150), but we consider it a form of flattery and awareness of our strength,” he said.
Though the T150 is at the auto show, it won’t be in the market until the spring of ’99, giving the U.S. truckmakers even more time to flex their muscle.
“We’re prepared. They’re aiming at where we’ve been and we don’t plan to stay there very long. We set the trends in full-size trucks and plan to continue to dominate and not let a contender come in with a pretender,” Nasser says of the T150.
The T150 will have a V-8 engine–the price of admission into the full-size truck segment. And it will have four-doors on extended-cab versions. Dodge began offering four-doors on Ram this year; Ford will have a limited number of four-door F-Series this year, more next; and Chevy will have four doors in at least a year, or about when the T150 arrives.
Nasser said Ford isn’t going to rest on its full-size truck and SUV dominance and has other derivatives in the works. Just like the F-150 was the basis for the new Expedition and Navigator, the F-350 super-duty will be the basis for an upcoming huge SUV, reportedly to be called Excursion. to rival the Chevy Suburban.
“We’re very flexible,” Nasser said, without divulging the game plan for derivatives.
As for the Suburban fighter off the F-350, “that would be consistent with our strategy to derive several vehicles from the same platform in the future,” he said.
