95% Of Pickup Truck Buyers Agree With Dan Neil: Toyota Tundra Not The Most Technically Advanced Truck

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Dan Neil fairly torched the 2016 Toyota Tundra CrewMax in a recent review for The Wall Street Journal’s Rumble Seat.

“It is not the strongest, the swiftest and definitely not the most fuel efficient,” Neil wrote in a particularly stinging paragraph which began by Neil calling the Tundra, “not the most technically advanced truck on the market.”

The Tundra faithful, not particularly numerous at the best of times relative to rival Detroit nameplates, is an ever more compact group of individuals. With each passing month, America’s truck buyers make increasingly clear that they heartily agree with Dan Neil.

“It has a pretty raucous-sounding powertrain,” Neil says of the highfalutin 1794 Edition Tundra, “and delivers fairly squishy driving reflexes compared with its prime competitors.” Those prime competitors own 95 percent of the full-size truck market so far this year, up from 94 percent through the first five months of 2015. Indeed, Tundra market share among full-size pickups was fairly steady at 6 percent after falling from 7 percent in 2009 and 2010 and from 9 percent in 2008 and 2007, when Tundra volume reached record highs.

In other words, a decade ago, nearly one out of every ten pickup trucks sold in the United States was a Toyota Tundra. That figure now stands at one in twenty.

Neil’s right when he explains some of the reasoning behind the Tundra’s scarcity. In contrast to its chief rivals, the Toyota, “has a more limited menu.” But this isn’t new – the Tundra’s lack of variants was equally noteworthy when 9 percent of the full-size pickup trucks sold in America were Tundras.

But Neil’s especially right when he says the Tundra isn’t high-tech. There’s no aluminum-intensive body, no highly efficient diesel or trailer parking, either. Toyota, for so long at the forefront of hybrid technology and lean manufacturing excellence, has allowed the Tundra to grow grey and old. Recent refreshes included a thick treatment of Just For Men, but consumers aren’t fooled: the Tundra is ancient.

The second-generation Toyota Tundra arrived at dealers in 2007. (Note: the 2014-onward Tundra is sometimes called a third-generation model, but c’mon.) The 5.7-liter 4×4 Toyota Tundra rang EPA’s fuel consumption meter at 14 miles per gallon nine years ago. Today? 15 mpg, in a world where F-150 EcoBoost 2.7-liter V6 travels 33-percent farther on a gallon of fuel.

Besides the noted superiority of direct full-size rivals, the truck market’s marginally improved midsize demand is abundantly obvious inside Toyota’s own pickup truck portfolio. Sales of the class-leading Toyota Tacoma rose to a record high of 179,562 units in calendar year 2015, and the Tacoma’s 9-percent year-over-year improvement through 2016’s first five months outpaces the pickup truck sector’s 6-percent uptick. Monthly Tacoma volume has increased in 19 of the last 21 months.

Yet while U.S. pickup truck volume rose 6 percent, or 59,000 units, in the first five months of 2016, Tundra sales are down 11 percent this year, a 5,555-unit drop. Monthly Tundra volume has decreased in nine of the last 10 months, including a five-month streak to begin 2016. In a historic context, the 106,000 Tundras Toyota USA is on track to sell in 2016 represents a 46-percent decrease from 2007, when the Tundra was new.

The Tundra doesn’t go without compliments. “The Tundra 1794 is absolutely chockablock with creature comforts,” Neil says, while also giving credit to Toyota’s Tundra pricing model.

Perhaps the Tundra’s marketplace performance deserves a positive outlook, as well. Here’s a truck that Toyota seemingly forgot to foster — Ford has debuted two new F-150s since the second-generation Tundra was introduced — yet it’s a truck that is set to make 2016 the fifth consecutive year in which more than 100,000 are sold.

Moreover, it could be worse. Toyota sells nine Tundras for every Titan sold by Nissan.

[Image Source: Toyota]

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Follow on Twitter @goodcarbadcar and on Facebook.