Hollywood couldn't have scripted a better time for Toyota to launch its redesigned Tacoma.
The midsize-pickup market is in the middle of a comeback. Toyota can't build enough of the outgoing Tacomas to meet demand -- despite the fact that the current generation of the pickup has been around for a decade and is a dinosaur by industry standards.
Meanwhile General Motors waded back into the midsize market last fall with its Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon, and has been rewarded by robust sales and the Colorado's Motor Trend Truck of the Year award.
Fueled by GM and Toyota's success, the market share for these smaller pickups quickly jumped to 2.1 percent of the light-vehicle market this year through July, according to the Automotive News Data Center, up from 1.5 percent a year earlier. Analysts expect that growth to continue at least through 2016.
So where were all these buyers hiding?
"This is basically coming from the strength of the market," Bill Fay, Toyota Division general manager, told Automotive News at the press launch for the Tacoma here. Thanks to easy credit and low gasoline prices, "we've got a 10-year-old truck that's getting very little marketing support but has a huge amount of support in the marketplace," Fay said.
This means when the 2016 Tacoma goes on sale on Sept. 10, the problem won't be selling the truck, but building it. Inventories of the outgoing version dwindled to below a 15-day supply in July, and that's after Toyota added a third shift at its Baja California, Mexico, plant in April.
In addition to a favorable economy, the new models from GM and Toyota are bringing with them new levels of refinement, capability and size that smaller pickups previously didn't offer. That's helping them lure buyers out of everything from midsize sedans to full-size pickups.
Touch-screen navigation systems, quieter cabins, heated leather seats and premium sound systems are now just as common in a midsize pickup as any other segment. Toyota's 2016 Tacoma will even offer a new Limited trim level for the first time, which adds a moonroof to that list of goodies.
"The compact truck segment had gotten pretty stale and it wasn't competitive with other segments," said Ed Kim, vice president of industry analysis at AutoPacific. "All of a sudden that's no longer the case. The arrival of these trucks is really speaking to a consumer need that has been unfulfilled."
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