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Toyota announced today that in light of greatly diminished sales of the full-size Tundra pickup and Sequoia SUV, the company will start selling them on the international market. As with just about every other full-size pickup and SUV, these big Toyotas have suffered greatly at the hands of $4 per gallon gasoline. The situation is particularly troubling because most Tundras are built in a brand-new (and extremely expensive) purpose-built factory in San Antonio, Texas – smack in the middle of truck country.

The 2009 Toyota Tundra: Right at Home in Uzbekhistan!
It’s a rare stumble for the usually unimpeachable Toyota; the company had invested untold dollars in developing and manufacturing a true full-size pickup contender that could go toe-to-toe with the best of the Big 3 pickups, only to have the market for such vehicles tank in a matter of months. As the Tundra hadn’t built up commercial credibility yet (commercial users are a major source of full-size pickup sales), the truck was relying heavily on personal-use customers. With fuel prices being the way they are, personal-use pickup customers are the first to leave; they may want pickups, but they don’t need pickups. That being the case, demand for Tundra has collapsed.

Demand for the Tundra-derived Sequoia is weak too; sales of all large body-on-frame SUVs have pretty much dried up. Not only are fuel prices a major issue, but today’s SUV buyer generally wants a vehicle that drives like a smooth-riding car, not a rough-riding truck. We had the opportunity to evaluate a Sequoia last week. Having spent much more time recently driving car-based crossovers, it was striking just how truck-like the Sequoia felt. It offers lots of hauling capability for those who need it, but I for one would never want to drive one of those day to day; it simply felt too clumsy, unwieldy, and unrefined compared to modern car-based SUVs.
So what’s Toyota – the company seemingly incapable of error or miscalculation – to do? Send them overseas to international markets! That’s the plan, anyways. Trouble is, we can think of few applicable markets outside of North American where these vehicles would have any relevance. They’re way too big and thirsty for Europe. Ditto for Asia. Probably too expensive for most of Africa, at least in volume numbers. Maybe they can sell a few Tundras in the Middle East to support the construction boom in Dubai? However, Sequoia probably has no relevance there as Toyota’s own Land Cruiser renders it redundant. Maybe they can offload a few Sequoias in Moscow where the new-money crowd embraces the bigger-is-better mindset. They’d probably have to badge it a Lexus, though, as the Toyota brand is ironically just too Proletarian for the ex-Soviet nouveau-riche.
Fact is, Tundra and Sequoia were built expressly for North American customers’ unique needs and demands. Sure, they might sell a few here and there outside of North America, but when even Americans are thumbing their noses at these vehicles, Toyota is going to be hard-pressed to sell these vehicles’ attributes elsewhere. The number they can sell outside of North American won’t come even remotely close to offsetting the lost volume back home.
As we stated earlier, this situation is an unusual misstep amongst Toyota’s endless succession of shrewdly calculated triumphs. As a result of all of Toyota’s continuous successes, however, the losses that result from this misstep have much less impact on the company. For the last decade, the domestic Big Three relied on big truck products for the bulk of their profits, hence their current woes. For Toyota, on the other hand, their broad spectrum of competencies means that despite failure in the full-size truck segments, there are countless other strengths to keep the company – as their tagline says – Moving Forward.