Despite a wave of new pickups, SUVs and minivans, Japanese vehicle makers aren’t going to find easy pickings in the US light truck market, General Motors vice chairman and ‘car czar’ Bob Lutz told The Car Connection (TCC) website in an interview.
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“The Japanese have been ‘attacking’ the truck segment for years,” he reportedly said, but so far have not succeeded in dislodging Detroit.
If anything, the Japanese have lost ground, he told TCC, in the one truck segment they did once dominate: small pickups.
“The Japanese got a foothold in cars in the late 1970s,” Lutz told the website, by appealing to a large group of “hugely angry Americans” fed up with Detroit products.
“There isn’t a hugely angry body of American truck owners,” the GM executive said, according to The Car Connection, adding: “I think we have a pretty solid lock on trucks and we’re going to get cars back, too.”
TCC noted that Lutz’s confidence will be tested in the future by products like the new Nissan Titan pickup, and the planned upgrade of the Toyota Tundra, which will be produced at an all-new plant in Texas, the heartland of the American light truck market.
