Toyota insists the Tundra isn’t too late to the party

Australian interest in full-sized pick-ups is cooling, but Toyota Australia is confident it will still find enough buyers to justify its brand-new contender, the Tundra.

The fourth behemoth model to be remanufactured locally to right-hand drive after the RAM 1500, Chevrolet Silverado and Ford F-150, the Tundra is also the most expensive of any ‘1500’ sold here so far.

It launches locally in fully loaded Limited guise, powered by a 3.5-litre twin-turbo petrol-electric V6 hybrid and priced from $155,990 plus on-road costs.

A second Tundra model is forecast to arrive in mid-2025.

Tundra goes on-sale at a time when sales of the big US trucks are down 3.2 per cent year-on-year to the end of October.

Much of that is driven by a near 50 per cent fall of the RAM 1500 sales leader. The recall-prone F-150 is under-performing against production capability, while the Silverado 1500 is the bright light with sales up 14.7 per cent.

RAM sold 5922 1500s in Australia in 2023 and 6833 trucks overall when the heavy-duty 2500 and 3500 versions were added to the tally.

But Toyota says it has conservative sales targets for the Tundra that hedge it against a segment losing sales.

“Even with the cool off period [for full-size truck sales], with the sales plans we’ve got whether it’s 1500, 2000, 3000 [Tundra sales per annum], I think we could manage it,” Toyota Australia sales marketing & franchise operations VP Sean Hanley said.

At its most optimistic, Hanley estimated a maximum of about 4000 Tundras could be remanufactured for Toyota by its local partner Walkinshaw Automotive Group, which also converts the Chevrolet and RAM.

“It could peak a little bit better [than 4000], so therefore the way we have structured the manufacturing and conversion of this vehicle we are okay, even in a cooling off market to do the numbers that we plan to.”

If it had committed to sourcing the Tundra from its manufacturing base in Texas, Hanley revealed Toyota Australia would have had to commit to selling 12,000-15,000 per annum to make the business case viable.

“We knew this market was never going to be 12,000 for us, ever,” he said.

Hanley added he was encouraged by sales interest in the Tundra in rural and regional Australia, which he predicted would be the Tundra’s primary sales market.

“What I am seeing is regional people are gravitating to it,” he said.

Hanley argued the unique localised third-party conversion of the Tundra also made it impossible to get on-sale any sooner in Australia.

The development program was first announced in 2022 and included the distribution of 300 Tundras for customer evaluation, but its approval was only formally announced in in September.

“We took a very different approach with this vehicle and we made a very conscious decision that if we are going to do an OE [original equipment] conversion [through a third party] first time out of Japan it had to be right,” Hanley said.

“It couldn’t be based on speed to market and sales volume. It just couldn’t be.

“It’s been a big journey of many years, so speed to market – even though that market was peaking at that time … and yes it peaked and yes it’s cooling off – was never the issue for us.”

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