Group items tagged

While the Detroit Three dominate big pickups, Toyota Motor Corp. has become the top mid-size truck seller in the U.S. with its Tacoma. GM, which stopped building a mid-size pickup for the U.S. last year, is returning to the segment with a redesigned version of the Chevrolet Colorado, betting it can appeal to Toyota buyers.

Along with the Colorado, GM will also offer a GMC version called the Canyon.

Ford Motor Co., whose F-Series has been the best-selling truck for 36 years, only sells full-size and heavy-duty versions, as does Chrysler Group LLC's Ram brand. Toyota doesn't offer a heavy-duty pickup while offering full-size and compact trucks.

a key point of Toyota's midterm strategic plan through 2025 is to determine whether to expand the San Antonio plant. The plant already is one of Toyota's fastest-moving factories worldwide, with a capacity of about 200,000 units, without overtime or Saturdays.

to build another line in San Antonio could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Plus, Toyota is still unsure if there's an additional 100,000 units of demand for its trucks -- the typical minimum volume for adding a new assembly line -- without resorting to costly incentives to push demand.

With truck demand returning, expansion is tempting

Toyota can produce a combined 250,000 Tundra full-sized and Tacoma compact pickups in San Antonio, running two shifts plus overtime and Saturdays, Fay said. Toyota's knockdown assembly plant in Tijuana, Mexico, can add another 50,000 Tacomas, but many of those trucks go to Mexico and Canada.

Assembly line tweaks could add about 7,000 units at each plant, Fay said. But that might not be enough.

Even if Tacoma sales were to stay flat next year, the combined pickup sales would exceed what San Antonio and Tijuana could produce for the United States. The quick rebound in pickup sales has caught Toyota by surprise.

GM has said there is pent-up demand for the redesigned 2015 Silverado heavy-duty pickups, which are expected to begin arriving in showrooms by the end of January. In

GM introduced one of the biggest engine programs in its history. Later this spring GM will debut the first of a new family of small Ecotec engines, 11 in all, that will be built around the world in five plants by 2017. The new three- and four-cylinder engines will eventually account for nearly 25 percent of GM’s total engine production and produced at the rate of 10,000 engines a day.

GM and Ford are collaborating on a new generation of 9- and 10-speed transmissions. The 10-speed gearboxes will be used in both company’s pickups in about two years. The F-150 and the GM twins, Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra, lag far behind Chrysler’s Ram 1500 Ecodiesel in the fuel economy race.

for the time being, both trucks use six-speed transmissions, while the Ram has 8-speeds.

Small crossovers and big pickups soared in 2013, as the two segments combined to account for one of every four vehicles sold. But growth in the compact and mid-sized car segments slowed significantly, and minivan sales declined.

car sales rose 4 percent, and light-truck sales increased 11 percent

In contrast to all of the segments that grew, minivan sales fell 2 percent, after rising 14 percent a year ago. It was an especially tight race among the four major minivan nameplates, with the three runners-up each falling fewer than 8,000 units short of the Honda Odyssey.

VW last month ousted U.S. divisional chief Jonathan Browning, who oversaw the 2011 launch of the mid-sized Passat, sales of which declined 6 percent in the United States last year after a surge in 2011-2012

Michael Horn, who this month said that VW headquarters had paid little heed to the dynamics of the U.S. market

won't improve until 2016 and it needs more models there, including a pick-up truck