Toyota’s Small Pickup Truck Dream Inches Closer To Reality

There are plenty of buyers who would absolutely love it if Toyota made a smaller truck. Something to compete with the Ford Maverick or the upcoming Slate pickup. A new report says that Toyota very much would like to have one to sell them. With transaction prices climbing, tiny trucks have become much more appealing. To buyers and to automakers both. That has the automaker working on building one, though the opportunity does not come without challenges.

“We’re Looking At It,” Toyota Says

“We’re looking at it,” Mark Templin, Toyota’s chief operating officer in the US, told Bloomberg. The company’s execs wouldn’t give details on how far along a plan for a smaller truck might be, or when one could be launched. It’s still certainly an if at this point.

“We could really do well in that segment, so we’re trying to do it,” Cooper Ericksen, a senior vice president in charge of planning and strategy at Toyota in the US, told the news site. “It’s a matter of timing.”

While developing an all-new model could take years, Toyota has some incentives to hurry. The Ford Maverick, which starts at under $30,000, sold 131,142 units in 2024. That’s 39 percent better than the year before, and Ford is said to still be struggling to keep up with demand. The Maverick sold 19,008 units in March, it’s all-time best month. Hyundai’s Santa Cruz leans more toward style than utility than does the Ford, and it saw sales hit 32,033 last year.

The Maverick makes a tempting target for Toyota, but Toyota also doesn’t have much pricing room to play with. The base price for a new Toyota Tacoma is $31,590, though that’s for an XtraCab. A two-seat model that isn’t exactly popular. A Double Cab, the four-door and five-seat truck, starts from $33,790. Fully loaded, a Tacoma can top $70,000.

Toyota does have some room to play with, though, when it comes to fuel economy. The most fuel-efficient new Tacoma delivers 24 mpg combined. That’s the hybrid model, though the best gas one is close at 23. A new Maverick hybrid delivers 38 mpg with front-drive and 37 with AWD. The gas model delivers as much as 25 combined.

Would The RAV4 Be A Perfect Start?

Where could Toyota start with a pickup? With the new 2026 RAV4, of course. Toyota’s best seller delivers the volume necessary to help reduce costs. It comes with hybrid or plug-in hybrid drive, and with a maximum of 320 horsepower, it could deliver more power than almost all of the body-on-frame mid-sized trucks it competes with.

The Maverick is largely a pickup version of the Escape, same for the Hyundai Santa Cruz and the Tucson. So a RAV4 pickup makes perfect sense. The latest RAV4, in PHEV form, can tow up to 3,500 pounds. Some reinforcement and extra cooling for pickup duty, and it can quickly catch and pass the 4,000 lbs. max of the Maverick and 5,000 of the Santa Cruz.

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Compact Trucks Vs. Mid-Size Trucks: Capability Showdown

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Earlier this week, we got a look at what a RAV4 pickup could look like thanks to new renderings. If Toyota can build it, it would be a winner. The largest obstacle, though, could be the RAV4’s success. Even before the latest tariffs, pickups had to be built in the US, Canada, or Mexico to escape a 25 percent charge. Toyota builds the RAV4 for the US at a plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. The plant, the brand’s largest in the world, is already very well utilized by RAV4, Camry, and Lexus ES production. It might need an expansion in order to make room for anything new.

Rumors have swirled for years that Toyota was mulling a revival of the Stout nameplate, and we feel like it might just be time to turn those rumors into something real.

Source: Bloomberg