Time for a reality check. Indeed Toyota was number one in car sales but not anymore, GM is number one in car sales. According to 'Automotive News' GM's car numbers are up 16.5% and Toyota is down 5.3%. Even though there are far more car models offered in the US, the number of trucks sold in the US far exceeds car sales. The Ford F150 is by far the single largest selling vehicle in the US about twice as many as the number one car Camry and has been for nearly 27 years. GM however sells more trucks than Ford but in more brand names.
The Titan truck is not selling nearly as well as the modest numbers predicted. If the Titan is taking truck sales from anyone it is taking them from the Tundra not the F150. F150 sales have been up every month since it hit the market. Even up double digits in some months. The 'F' Series alone sells more vehicles than ALL of Toyota/Lexus vehicles combined. Toyota is still ahead of Ford in car sales but only by about 10,000 vehicles and Ford has three new cars coming to market in a few months and Toyota has none. Keep tuned.
mike hunt
joe_g wrote:
> washingtonpost.com
> Japan Stakes Claim in Heart of Truck Country
>
> By Greg Schneider
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page A01
>
> SAN ANTONIO -- It's a weekday afternoon at Cavender's Boot City and
> the parking lot is filled with pickup trucks. Store manager Brett
> Emmons drives up in a truck of his own, a burgundy Ford F-150. He
> walks across the lot with a stiff-backed cowboy bounce, taller than
> life in his Atwood-brand straw hat and ostrich-skin boots.
>
> Emmons keeps his customers looking like Texans with authentic
> Western-wear brands, but lately his own eye has wandered. Not long ago
> he checked out a Japanese-label pickup truck, a Nissan Titan. He
> didn't buy one, but he wouldn't rule it out.
>
> Across town, San Antonio police officer Art Garro makes a courtesy
> call at Ottea Taxidermy. His cruiser is the only car in a lot crowded
> with trucks, as several buddies gather inside amid deer racks and
> freezers full of hides. Garro says he has a truck, too: a Ford F-350.
> But he's looked at a Toyota Tundra. "It's an awesome truck," he says. >
> These are danger signs for the reign of the American full-size pickup
> truck, the last bastion of unchallenged strength for U.S. automakers.
> Import trucks are gaining credibility in Texas. Sales are beginning to
> creep upward -- in Dallas, for example, registrations of import trucks
> have risen each of the last four years while domestic truck
> registrations have declined, according to Freeman Publishers Inc.,
> which tracks auto trends there.
>
> Texans buy more full-size pickups than people in any other market on
> Earth. One out of every seven large pickups sold in the U.S. is
> registered in Texas, and all but about 3.5 percent of those are
> American brands. There's such an emotional bond between Texans and the
> trucks their fathers bought that outsiders have hardly tried to
> compete over the years.
>
> But all that's changing. Nissan and Toyota, having already eaten up
> U.S. market share in cars, SUVs and minivans, are bulling their way
> into the half-ton pickup market. This hits Detroit where it hurts:
> Pickups represent nearly half of all sales-related profits for the Big
> Three automakers, said Sean McAlinden, chief economist for the Center
> for Automotive Research in Michigan.
>
> "Pretty much of the country thinks pickups are all Detroit knows how
> to make anymore," McAlinden said. "They're the closest thing to pure
> Americana that's actually made in the United States anymore, this side
> of the ice cream cone."
>
> Nissan has built a plant in Mississippi to produce its new Titan
> truck, which it markets as a homegrown product and which is the first
> Asian model to match the size and power of the most popular U.S.
> trucks such as the Ford F-150 and Dodge Ram.
>
> Toyota this year became the first Asian company allowed into a major
> NASCAR racing event, the Craftsman Truck series. In two years the
> company will debut a new full-size pickup built at an $800 million
> plant just beginning construction in the heart of truck country: San > Antonio. >
> In response to that aggressive move, Ford went to San Antonio last
> year to conduct the national rollout of its redesigned F-150 line, the
> most popular vehicle in America and the key to Ford's very survival. >
> Last year, Toyota's top-selling passenger cars helped it pass Ford as
> the world's second biggest automaker. Even modest success for Nissan
> and Toyota trucks could cost U.S. competitors more than $1 billion a
> year in profits, one expert projects. But first the imports need to be
> able to cut it in Texas. American truck makers will make their stand
> in the home of the Alamo.
>
> "We understand the competitive landscape has just gotten more crowded
> and is going to be more intense going forward," said Doug Scott, truck
> group marketing manager for Ford. "I fully expect the buyer in Texas
> -- and elsewhere -- is going to look at and consider the Titan and
> whatever Toyota has to offer. . . . So we have to be on our game, and
> that's what we intend to do."
>
> Brand Loyalty
>
> Bruce Groda is one Texan Ford doesn't have to worry about. Sauntering
> out of Hermann Sons Steakhouse in the town of Hondo after lunch,
> toothpick rolling around his mouth and arms bulging out of a plaid
> shirt with the sleeves ripped off, Groda leaves no doubt about his > loyalties. >
> "I'm a Ford man from way back when," he says, opening the door to a
> 1994 F-350 with more than 260,000 miles on the odometer. "I'm not too
> much on any damn foreign vehicles. . . . Not interested. Don't need
> 'em. Not American."
>
> Groda says he uses his truck for "hog hunting, deer hunting, chasing
> women and drinking beer," then smiles and points to the "Dozer
> Service" logo on his door. "I use it for hauling dozers and
> equipment."
>
> Groda represents a core of old-school drivers who are either rabidly
> committed to American brands or need super-heavy-duty, one-ton work
> trucks for towing things like bulldozers. Nissan and Toyota so far
> have no plans to build one-ton trucks, though that could change if the
> half-tons catch on.
>
> About 30 percent of all truck drivers were hard-core American
> loyalists in market surveys three years ago, but that number has been
> falling and now is probably below 20 percent, said Larry Dominique,
> Nissan's chief product specialist for the Titan.
>
> That still leaves a large market open to imports. Americans bought a
> total of 2.3 million full-size trucks last year -- up from 1 million
> just a decade ago. Such trucks make up one of only two categories of
> vehicle that sold more in 2003 than the year before, along with
> car-like "crossover" SUVs, said Paul Taylor, chief economist for the
> National Association of Automobile Dealers.
>
> The numbers are forcing Toyota to get serious about full-size trucks
> after years of products that came up just short in size and power.
> Today, nearly half of Toyota's small-truck buyers are fleeing to
> bigger sizes, said Ernest Bastien, vice president of the vehicle
> operations group for Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc.
>
> The company rolled out a full-size pickup concept at this year's North
> American International Auto Show in Detroit, a 19-foot-long behemoth
> that executives said was intended to look like a fist at the end of a
> muscular arm. "Big, bold and bad," is how Bastien put it -- quite a
> departure for the company that gave the world the gas-electric hybrid > Prius. >
> That concept truck is a hint of what the company will build in San
> Antonio. "We're really unabashed about saying we want to sell more
> pickup trucks in Texas," said Dan Sieger, spokesman for Toyota
> manufacturing. "We hope to change their perception in Texas of what
> our trucks are all about."
>
> Nissan chose a similar strategy, building its factory in the South --
> Mississippi -- and creating a truck aimed specifically at the nation's
> top-sellers. The company's U.S. side had to convince headquarters that
> Nissan couldn't afford to ignore such a juicy part of the American
> marketplace, Dominique said. Full-size-truck buyers spend a bigger
> percentage of income on their trucks than buyers of any other type of
> vehicle, he said, often adding $2,000 in accessories to their $35,000
> purchases -- creating huge profit for the makers.
>
> Nissan spent years surveying domestic truck buyers and tried to meet
> or better U.S. trucks on every key point -- size, horsepower and
> towing capacity. "Credibility was the number one thing on our mind,"
> Dominique said. "We can't change the fact that it says Nissan on the
> front . . . so we felt we had to take away all of the excuses that
> people would have to reject us."
>
> So far, the results for Nissan have been mixed. The Titan has gotten
> rave reviews, but sales have gotten off to a slow start, with only
> 16,279 sold since it debuted in December. Nissan says it is just
> ramping up and still expects to hit its goal of 100,000 for the year
> -- a volume that could cost domestic automakers at least $1 billion in
> annual profits, said University of Maryland business professor Peter > Morici. >
> Fading Bias
>
> The big U.S. companies have been girding for battle. General Motors
> has been updating its truck line annually since 1999.
>
> "Nobody in our place is waving a white flag," said Gary White, the GM
> North America vice president who oversees full-size trucks. White
> argues that the domestic truck market is in better shape than the
> market for cars was in the 1980s and '90s, when Japanese and Europeans
> quickly took over with products deemed superior. Today's American
> truck makers have loyal customers and a huge head start, selling more
> trucks in a month than the imports sell in a year, he said.
>
> Domestic automakers also have a far more extensive dealer network than
> the imports. For example, while there are several Nissan and Toyota
> dealerships in San Antonio, there are not any in seven surrounding
> counties . But there are numerous small towns with old domestic
> dealerships, such as Hondo, 35 miles to the southwest, which has Ford
> and Chevrolet retailers serving a population of fewer than 8,000. >
> That's not stopping people from heading to the city to buy imports.
> Behind the counter of the local Parts Plus auto supply store, where
> customers sit on vinyl stools to watch traffic go by, owner Ruben
> Hernandez said he sees an increasing number of foreign trucks. "Most
> are younger people," said Hernandez, a Hondo native who has run the
> shop 12 years. "I'm beginning to see some Toyota trucks around,
> getting some calls for filters and such. They'll probably get their
> share [of the market]. They've got some pretty nice-looking products." >
> Back in San Antonio, Toyota trucks are showing up in more driveways,
> with registrations increasing to 6.3 percent of the local market in
> 2003 from 5 percent in 2000, according to the Spindle Report, which
> compiles local vehicle statistics. Last month the city sold more
> Tundras -- the biggest pickup currently made by Toyota -- than any
> other location in a five-state sales region, said Dale Hall, Toyota's
> district sales manager.
>
> At South Texas Outfitters, which takes $40,000 trucks and converts
> them into $80,000 dream machines for ranchers and hunters, Toyota has
> achieved a special status: The shop has created metal "jigs," or
> patterns, for forming heavy grille guards on Toyota Tacomas and
> Tundras. Until about a year ago, the business only had jigs for
> American brands. "They've gotten hot already, and the plant's not even
> here yet," said Lutz Issleib II, the shop manager.
>
> The Texas bias against import trucks is "dead already, and has been
> for a while," Issleib said. "When I see these country boys and
> ranchers coming in and I'm outfitting Toyotas for them . . .
>
> "You'd never think you'd see it, but we do."
>
> That's why a Texas icon such as Red McCombs, the former owner of the
> San Antonio Spurs basketball team, thinks Toyota will find success in
> Texas. McCombs currently owns the Minnesota Vikings but still lives
> and works in San Antonio. He endowed the business school at the
> University of Texas, and his San Antonio office is a shrine to the
> Lone Star state, with Indian artifacts, paintings of the Old West and
> an orange and white Texas Longhorns chair in the waiting room. The
> self-made son of a Ford auto mechanic, McCombs now owns car
> dealerships all over San Antonio, including both a Ford and a Toyota > dealership. >
> Once 2,000 local workers start cranking pickups out of the new factory
> in a couple of years, McCombs said, Toyotas won't seem like Japanese
> trucks anymore. They're going to be Texas trucks. "I grew up seeing a
> sign in the back of Ford trucks that said 'Made in Texas by Texans,' "
> he said. The Dallas plant that produced those trucks closed in the
> 1960s, he said, "but it was a real matter of pride to have that
> sticker. I think Toyota is going to see some of that same feeling." >
> ========================================