Toyota Unveils Tundra Like a New Division

The introduction of Tundra to the press is made phenomenal by Toyota. Press people present in the event said that the introduction belongs to a different species of automotive press event.

Usually, reporters from farming, construction, aftermarket trades, towing, hunting and fishing, RV, and motorcycle magazines do not come all at the same ride and drive. Toyota brings them together to take part in a remarkable press event. So far, it is the largest press gathering Toyota has spearheaded in its 45 or so years in the United States.

"People in construction, farming, mining, will help give us credibility," said Michael O'Brien, product planning manager, who added that, among other things, the commercial sales fleet has been charged with finding high-visibility operations, such as road construction and maintenance companies to sign up for fleet purchases of the truck.

Ernest Bastien, VP vehicle operations group, said Toyota is treating the launch of its Tundra full-size pickup as if it were launching an entirely new division, including reorganizing its marketing and product development teams. "We have co-located planning, advertising, PR, event planning, distribution, accounting, and the company's University of Toyota," he added.

Tundra is a full-size pickup truck that was nominated for the North American Truck of the Year award. For the year 2000, Tundra was named Motor Trend's Truck of the Year. Auto Toyota Tundra body parts are engineered to stand the demands of towing, transporting and other needs of real truckers. Further, auto parts Toyota truck are now also given more attention than before. The emphasis is to penetrate the loyal truck market of the industry.

Toyota is also making a Scion dealer sales-force training program beyond the traditional. In addition, the automaker is running a 4-day product and marketing immersion called "Truck Champions." "The only dealer training immersion we have done that even comes close to that was for the Prius launch," said Bastien, who added that Toyota 's dealership training road show in January is also much larger than before. "We will train some 24,000 salespeople," he said. "For the Camry launch we trained 18,000." Auto parts for Toyota Camry exude quality and performance.

The new plant of the automaker in San Antonio, Texas has 200,000 units of capacity. For Princeton, Indiana plant the capacity is 100,000. Toyota intends to sell about 200,000 vehicles next year.