Toyota’s New Pick-Up Falters: Welcome To Detroit

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 30, 4:17AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Toyota’s (TM) new full-sized pick-up, the Tundra, was supposed to get the Japanese company into a lucrative market dominated by Ford’s (F) F-series and the Chevy (GM) Silverado. But, on the way to another big success in taking market share from US companies, Toyota stumbled and is offering $3,000 incentives on its new product.

Pick-ups are where Detroit makes money. The F-series is still Ford’s flagship and one of its most profitable products.

Pick-up buyers are probably not like car buyers, at least in thefull-sized segment. These customers actually use the trucks in theirjobs. They are not for driving around town. They are not about leatherseats or rear-seat entertainment packages. These are working trucks.

Big pick-ups have to operate on construction sites, unpaved roads,and farms. Recently, the Tundra got a worse safety rating from the USgovernment than its Detroit rivals.

What the mainstream media does not say, is the the full-sizedpick-up market is probably a much more "buy American" crowd than thesissies who but hybrids. Job cuts at US car companies probably botherthem more than most. And, a big Japanese truck is not something theywant to be seen in.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.