Truck Model Roundup CLASS 1 & 2
New Models Underscore Continued Belief In The Pickup
Buyers are back following a sales fall-off last spring; greater fuel efficiency will help this highly useful and popular vehicle.
By Tom Berg, Senior Equipment Editor
Has the bloom faded? Full-size pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles used to be the Big Three auto builders' best source of profits and sales. Recent figures show a serious downturn, with sales of some truck and SUV lines down by 30 percent, suggesting that Americans have been shocked enough by high gasoline prices to begin turning away from gas-thirsty trucks, vying instead for the more efficient small cars. Is the fat lady singing over the demise of the pickup?
Absolutely not, say the builders. For one thing, comparing present sales with last year's is misleading because "employee pricing" and other radical incentives in summer of '05 spiked sales to record highs, which is a hard act to follow. Pickups still account for 14 percent of total vehicle sales, compared to 14.5 percent last year, says Ben Poore, Ford Truck Group's marketing manager. That percentage dropped to about 12 percent following fuel price spikes last spring, but has edged up again. Meanwhile, year-end incentives are now on, and many exceptional deals are available for those buying new vehicles.
Builders are betting that customers' enthusiasm for the highly useful trucks will continue by updating or replacing their products. Two vehicle lines are getting major revisions and one is being retired in favor of a new, larger truck. General Motors has just shown off its GMT900, which is replacing the current Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra this fall. Ford will announce major changes to its SuperDuty pickups early next year. And Toyota will begin building a bigger Tundra around the first of the year.
GM Chairman and CEO,Rick Waggoner appeared at the unveiling of the next-generation pickups last month, underscoring what others have said – that full-size pickups are among the company's "most important products."
Sales of GM's full-size SUVs, which the new pickups resemble, are stronger than many observers report, he asserted, and the company expects the new trucks to be just as popular. Waggoner said that the GMT900 is so vital that the entire program was pulled ahead 13 weeks. Roll-out of the entire line will be done in five months instead of the two years it took to phase in all versions of the GMT800 back in '99. Like now, the new pickups will include 1500, 2500 and 3500 series.
Gary White, GM's vice president for full-size trucks, said the current pickups grew in volume and market share throughout the '99 through '05 model years. Production and sales volume is now three times the combined volume of Nissan's Titan and Toyota's Tundra. This, he said, is due to the GM trucks' features and also to the breadth of the models, which include half-, three-quarter- and one-ton models. Ford and Dodge models offer similar breadth, something that Nissan and Toyota acknowledge but so far have not seen fit to emulate.
In spite of high fuel prices, more efficient diesel engines are still not offered in half-ton pickups. None of the manufacturers will say if that will change, or when. Ford is apparently still pondering use of a V-6 version of the Power Stroke V-8 that it backed away from several years ago due to its high price. GM is looking at several small diesels, including a V-6 rendition of the Duramax V-8, but is mum about any plans. DaimlerChrysler's Dodge brand continues to prosper with its version of the Cummins ISB inline 6, which is growing in displacement in January and is almost certainly too big and heavy for a half-ton truck.
Cummins just announced a deal with a with "a major automotive manufacturer serving the North American market to produce and market a light-duty, diesel-powered engine." It will enter production at the end of this decade and will be for vehicles under 8,500 pounds gross, the announcement said. That probably means light trucks but could also include automobiles. It is not a smaller version of the ISB, Cummins sources told HDT. The customer wants to remain anonymous, and none of the likely ones would tell us if they're involved. That includes Nissan, which is rumored to be looking for a small diesel, and DaimlerChrysler, which of course is already Cummins' biggest single customer by virtue of the ISB/Turbo Diesel that goes into about two-thirds of its heavier Dodge Rams.
Meanwhile, fuel economy of most gasoline engines continues to improve along with their longevity. GM claims that upcoming versions of its small-block V-8s have higher EPA fuel-economy ratings that any competitors' engines, and most GM gas engines will last at least 200,000 miles.
Indeed, GM has a 200,000-mile Club composed of customer trucks, some of which were on display at the GMT900 introduction. One, a well-worn and rusted '85 Sierra, had covered 462,000 miles and its 4.3-liter V-6 "hasn't been touched," according to owner Jim Campbell of Cadillac, Mich. It's been a freight hauler, carrying auto parts in its bed and in a box trailer, he said. Hmmm. Could this be an idea for truckload carriers?
Truck Model Roundup continued...
