Dealers Expect Toyota to Come Through With New Crossover Models

While Toyota already boasts a well fleshed out utility lineup, it seems everyone agrees there’s more money to be made in the middle. By that, we mean the juicy sweet spot spanning roughly the compact to midsize segments, where sales potential is the greatest.

Toyota has already suggested there’s another model to come, but we now hear that dealers — the best gauge of buyers’ desires — fully expect the automaker to follow through. And not just with a single model.

Speaking to Automotive News, Mike White, chairman of the Toyota National Dealers’ Advisory Council, said there’s room in the lineup for new offerings.

“Obviously, the market shifted to light trucks, and more trucks is something we would all like,” White said, explaining the dealer network’s reaction to a U.S. sales plateau. “I think we’re all very optimistic about another really solid year.”

The source of this optimism isn’t just the fact that Toyota sells tons of Tacomas, RAV4s, and Camrys. A decline in any of those nameplates could see the brand lose ground. No, White seems confident the utility vehicle product pipeline didn’t dry up after the C-HR popped out.

“I think with the market shifting to light trucks, we’re confident that Toyota is going to come up with the products we need to fill those slots,” he said, referring to the space between the compact RAV4 and midsize, three-row Highlander. He added “we know they’re working on it, and we’re confident that they know what the needs of the customer are, and they listen intently to the dealers, so we’re confident they’re working on more SUVs to fill those slots.”

Just going by White’s language, it’s possible Toyota is considering more than one new utility vehicle. There’s other evidence for it. Late last year, Toyota Motor North America General Manager Jack Hollis confirmed a new small crossover will join the brand’s lineup within the next two to three years.

“It’s like the 90s again, we can have more than one vehicle in each segment if they are different enough,” Hollis said.

Hollis mentioned a small, all-wheel-drive crossover with a starting price that could fall under $20k, placing it slightly above the subcompact, front-drive C-HR. It’s an obvious space for a new vehicle, and Toyota’s modular TNGA platform would make creating a small, brawnier addition an easy task.

There’s a new RAV4 bowing for 2019, but we haven’t yet seen it in full. From what we have seen, it adopts some of the styling cues of last year’s FT-AC concept — a roughly RAV4-sized vehicle displaying a ruggedness not present in the brand’s existing compact. Hollis implied the RAV4 was too much of a sales magnet to allow for another vehicle of similar size and price. He did not, however, rule out a new model positioned above it.

The midsize space in Toyota’s lineup is already well-populated, with the unibody Highlander and body-on-frame 4Runner offering buyers a choice of capability and image. Whether the gulf between RAV4 and Highlander is large enough to accomodate a new model — without cannibalizing RAV4 sales — remains to be seen.

In a market that shrunk by 1.8 percent in 2017, Toyota brand sales rose 0.52 percent in the U.S. compared to a year earlier. Over the first two months of 2018, Toyota trucks and SUV sales are up 17.4 percent compared to the same period in 2017. Toyota cars sales rose 0.5 percent in this period.

[Images: Toyota]