For Toyota dealers, the new 2022 Tundra full-size pickup can’t come soon enough. Pickup sales are booming, but the fact that the current Tundra generation was introduced in 2007 has largely left Toyota’s full-sizer out of the conversation. That’s about to change, as dealerships expect to get their first look at the finally-new 2022 Tundra this week, Automotive News reports. Toyota dealers are absolutely stoked about this.
So far, the only thing that’s really been shown to dealerships about the 2022 Tundra has been a teaser video in November that showed off the truck’s LED lighting, according to Automotive News. Toyota has been very quiet so far about the new truck, and there hasn’t been the flood of spy shots that we’ve gotten used to from other marques’ trucks, either. (Here’s lookin’ at you, Ford.)
Toyota National Dealer Advisory Council Chairman Robby Findlay’s quote to Automotive News says it all, really:
“The new Tundra is the most exciting thing we’ve had in the last five-plus years. I mean, we’ve been waiting so long for a new Tundra; we know the potential of that full-size-truck market. And from everything that they’re telling us, we’re going to have best in class. I mean, we’re going to have a world beater, and it’s going to be fun to really go toe-to-toe with the domestic trucks.”
Given that pickups are some of the highest-profit vehicles that dealerships sell today, it’s not hard to see why Toyota dealerships would be this excited about a new truck coming through. This is the first time in years that Toyota dealerships feel as if they’ll have a competitive enough full-size truck to take some market share away from Detroit’s Big Three.
Building one generation of a vehicle for 14 years isn’t unheard of—the outgoing Nissan Frontier gen is old enough to drive, for example. It’s just not good, especially when your main competitors are rolling out new generations of their trucks while you’re still letting your existing truck stagnate.
There’s a lot of things we’ve learned about safety since 2007, for one, and that alone is enough to drive many customers to a different truck. People also just tend to forget about a truck when it’s not making any headlines. The last time this Tundra generation was refreshed was in 2014, and even that refresh is getting up in years. Customers want new bells and whistles, and Toyota is about to give it to them.
The numbers back up the feeling that the Tundra has been relegated to also-ran status in the pickup market. The Tundra placed fifth out of six full-size pickups in its class in U.S. sales last year, beating only the often-overlooked Nissan Titan, Automotive News reports. Since hitting the U.S. market in 1999, the Tundra has never outsold any of the pickups from the Big Three, and frankly, that’s a shame.
The current Tundra is a great truck, and one of the vehicles that owners tend to hold onto the longest accordingly. To wit, I have not had any other test vehicle where as many current owners come over to look at the shiny new version and talk at length at how much they like their older one. The Tundra has a following, and thus, expectations for a new one are high. A whopping 14.2{238954a7177ad4ea76334dec149dc9c7585cf97688643acb70da401e7ff37a58} of Tundra owners hold on to their trucks for 15 years or longer, per Business Insider, making it just about time for a lot of owners to look for a replacement.