Battle of the Trucks: Who's Gonna Win the Fight?

Will Ford retain its supremacy in the truck segment despite the potent rivals behind it? So far, F-150, which belongs to the powerful F-Series, is Ford's best-selling truck. It is enjoying its reign for more than 2 decades now. In fact, now that the automaker's cars are not selling well, F-150 is deemed the bread-and-butter of the company.

The automaker is constantly upgrading Ford F-150 truck parts to further improve the vehicle's performance and charisma. However, other truck competitors are eyeing on F-150 to come up with something better. This has started the ongoing battle of the trucks.

Toyota released its Tundra and Chevrolet freed its Silverado. Are these trucks powerful enough to topple Ford's pride?

General Motors Corp. Vice Chairman Robert Lutz said Toyota's redesigned Tundra pickup, hitting showrooms in February, is likely to be a strong seller, but GM doesn't anticipate to cede much market share to the Asian automaker. "They'll do well," Lutz added. However, he doesn't think that Tundra will get much from GM's full-size truck sales. The latter sells approximately 1 million units annually.

One serious threat to Ford's reign is Toyota Tundra. The full-size pickup truck from Toyota, introduced at the Chicago Auto Show for 2007, is a larger truck with striking towing capacity. It is given state-of-the-art Toyota Tundra high performance parts to boost its capabilities.

Toyota will soon open in San Antonio a 2.2-million-square-foot manufacturing facility plant worth $850 million. Said plant is the new haven for the manufacture and assembly of bigger Tundra.

"The customers will decide. I do know that we have done a sensational job of listening to our customers," said GM sales chief, Mark LaNeve. Subsequently, Denise Morrissey, Toyota's spokesperson agreed that the market will decide however; she added that Toyota is expecting to sell 200,000 Tundras next year. Said estimate is up from about 126,000 in 2005. Through October, Toyota has sold approximately 100,000 Tundras.

"We've been competing with Ford, GM and Dodge for 50 years. We know the full-size market is very loyal and smart. Once they get familiar with the Tundra, get to know it, I think they will consider it. Loyalty is definitely key in this market, but it will only get you so far," Morrissey noted.

However, according to David Healy, an auto analyst with Burnham Securities, "Toyota is not going to get a lot of the good ol' boys out of the Silverados and F-150s. The idea is mostly these are going to be sold to people who already own Toyotas and are looking to upgrade into that area."