Truck builders looking back to the future

Dan Carney • E-mail

The market for pickup trucks has been left for dead by most recent news reports, but as we learned from Miracle Max in “The Princess Bride,” there’s a big difference between “mostly dead” and “all dead.”

“Mostly dead is slightly alive,” Miracle Max explained in the movie. Slightly alive, in this case, means that pickup trucks still represent the third-largest automotive segment in North America, comprising 11 percent of all vehicle sales.

Not only that, but the pickup segment has fewer competitors than the better-selling small and midsized car markets, and it enjoys fatter profit margins. That means that despite the dire reports of the collapse of U.S. truck sales — they will fall from 2 million per year to about 1.4 million in 2008, according to CNW Market Research — they remain a vital and profitable chunk of the vehicle market.

So with some truck buyers turning their noses up at pickups because of high gas prices, automakers must still find a way to appeal to them. Some are looking at producing the compact pickups popular in the 1970s and ’80s as a way to do that.

The biggest problem for truck sellers is that a lot of truck buyers never needed trucks in the first place. Once gas prices made fueling an unneeded truck prohibitively expensive, those buyers fled the market like rats from a capsized garbage scow.

Why? Because these truck buyers used their mighty 4x4s for the crucial task of “hauling air,” said Mike Accavitti, director of Dodge brand marketing and communications for Chrysler.

Indeed, a full quarter of former truck buyers fall into the category Ford calls, “never, never, nevers,” said Mike Crowley, group marketing plan manager for Ford trucks and SUVs.

“That means they never tow, they never haul, and they never go off-road,” he said. They might occasionally haul a load of mulch or shuttle a kid off to college, but that was the extent of their truck use.

These buyers really just need an open bed, a hitch and some minimal capability. They bought six-cylinder full-size pickups before full-size trucks evolved into today’s behemoths, and they bought four-cylinder Japanese mini-trucks when they were popular.

Those customers are still out there, but manufacturers aren’t sure how best to approach them. Midsized trucks like the Dodge Dakota and Nissan Frontier haven’t set sales records, and Honda’s midsized, carlike Ridgeline is widely regarded as a sales failure.

So what do customers want?  Maybe a cheaper, more fuel-efficient full-size or midsize truck? Perhaps they want something like the old Ford F-100 model that was the entry level of the company’s truck line at one time. Rumors are flying that the company is contemplating a revival of that model, but Ford execs remain mum on the topic.

“They are doing it,” insisted Jim Hall, managing director of 2953 Analytics, a market research company.

“Light duty will go back to meaning light duty,” he said. “Today’s trucks are grossly over-engineered for towing and hauling. That’s why Ford is doing this new F-100 project. The biggest engine you’ll be able to get in it will be a six-cylinder.”

What’s unknown is whether a traditional full-size, body-on-frame pickup — even a cheaper, lighter one — is what customers want. Honda recognizes the need for a less-costly, more efficient Ridgeline.

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