26-04-2025
Little Trucks Are Quietly Taking Over the U.S. Car Market
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The compact pickup has returned to America and is poised to become the next big (little-ish) thing in a competitive and fragmenting category. Since their reintroduction in 2021—via the unibody, crossover-based Hyundai Santa Cruz and Ford Maverick—these vehicles have sold nearly 450,000 units, with their best sales year occurring in 2024, with over 130,000 Mavericks and over 32,000 Santa Cruzes rolling off dealer lots.
These trucks are succeeding because they tap into a long-ignored need. 'People like the idea of having a pickup, and these vehicles can actually do the truck stuff that most people want—hauling mulch or topsoil, or making a run to Ikea for new patio furniture, or to Home Depot for DIY projects—without the negatives of a big truck,' says Sam Abuelsamid, director of market research for automotive consulting firm Telemetry Insight.
These negatives are myriad. Full-size trucks have undergone radical enlargement, and are currently colossal, making them difficult to drive and park, challenging to clamber in and out of, guzzly of fuel, spewy of tire particles, crushy of roadways, and—as my reporting for R&T has shown—deathly cudgels, for occupants and other road users. All of these drawbacks are compounded by the fact that many owners rarely use them for truck-like behaviors. They're also expensive, with the Kelley Blue Book data posted in January showing that the average transaction price for one is nearly $65,000.
Midsize trucks, revived in the first decades of the 21st century to combat these liabilities, have followed the path of their larger brothers. 'People started to want more features, more room in the cab, larger payload, more capability,' says Abuelsamid. 'So you ended up with feature creep.' To give you a sense of this enhancement, a base 2025 Toyota Tacoma is now a half-foot longer than a base 2010 Chevrolet Silverado.
The realization of an unmet consumer need was evident. 'Hyundai looked at the market and said, 'Maybe now's the time to try a new compact truck,'' says John Sohn, the insurgent Korean brand's senior group manager of product planning. The Santa Cruz concept was shown in 2014 and began production at Hyundai's Georgia plant several years later.
'We wanted to create a unibody vehicle that could deliver an SUV-like driving experience, and offer quality interior materials, ride, and NVH, but with the added functionality of an open bed,' Sohn says. 'Ford did the same with the Maverick.'
This isn't a new idea. Asian automakers Nissan (née Datsun) and Toyota were the first to introduce small pickups here in the 1950s. 'Toyota compact trucks helped define low-priced, convenient-sized, highly capable trucks that had excellent reliability and longevity,' says Marcus Umlauff, general manager of Toyota's truck strategy.
This spurred the domestic manufacturers to lean on their Asian manufacturing partners to badge-engineer small, Japanese-built pickups for the U.S. market. GM brought out the Chevy Luv which was made by Isuzu, the Ford Courier of the 1980s was a rebadge of a Mazda, and Chrysler had a variety of pickups built by Mitsubishi, according to Abuelsamid.
Some of these vehicles were subject to the so-called 'Chicken Tax,' an 25-percent tariff added to the price of imported light trucks in 1964, initially to combat the popularity of the VW T2 pickup—and as part of President Johnson's inside deal with UAW leader Walter P Reuther to quell labor unrest, and cement support for his Civil Rights legislation, in the runup to his election. To avoid the duty, some were imported in bed-less chassis cab configurations, and then 'assembled' domestically. Some 'import' truck production was eventually moved to the U.S. to avoid the tax, but mainly, this tariff helped destroy the market, allowing the Big Three to breed ever-larger trucks in an evolutionarily closed environment mainly devoid of predators, like the Komodo Dragon of the U.S. car market.
Hyundai's entry into compact trucks avoids this history. 'We don't really have any heritage in terms open-bed vehicles in the U.S. market,' says Sohn. 'But Hyundai is known for trying something different.' As a bonus, in addition to helping the brand further establish its position as a market innovator, Santa Cruz has created unique sales opportunities. According to Sohn, 75 percent of its buyers are new to the Hyundai brand, and almost 25 percent of them are trading in a (non-Hyundai) full-size or mid-size pickup. Some Ford data shows that nearly 60 percent of Maverick buyers are new to the brand as well.
These vehicles have become so popular that other manufacturers are taking notice. 'Compact pickups have a role within the broad U.S. truck market and will likely solidify as a distinct segment, differentiated from midsize pickup trucks,' says Toyota's Umlauff.
This growing interest is confirmed by Sohn. 'Our competitive intelligence shows that Toyota is looking to enter into the space with their TNGA-C unibody platform, sub-Tacoma,' and that Chevy is 'supposed to be entering the space with a new vehicle in the low to mid $30,000 MSRP range.'
Abuelsamid concurs, noting that the coming years could see iterations of compact Central or South American market trucklets like the Ram Rampage and Chevy Montana find their way to the U.S., alongside domestic production from Mazda or VW's Scout brand. 'I don't know about Honda,' Abuelsamid says. 'And Nissan probably has bigger fish to fry right now,' referring to the company's swirling financial disarray.
Our global shift toward electrification could work well in this category, as proven by the Maverick, which offers a popular hybrid option. Additionally, on Thursday night, a new compact electric truck contender officially entered the space. The Jeff Bezos-backed Slate Truck was revealed as a small, modular, single-motor EV that the company says will get to customers in 2026 and start under $20,000 after federal incentives. It's a truck-SUV combo that's supposed to be as barebones and financially accessible as possible. That means crank windows and no infotainment screen.
'Electrification, even full EV, makes more sense for compact trucks because customers buying those are not expecting to be able to tow big trailers for long distances like they would in a full-size truck. It's more putting stuff in the bed, driving it around town,' says Abuelsamid. Yet Hyundai's Sohn isn't convinced compact EV pickups will flood the market in the near future due to possible cost-associated roadblocks.
But while he sees the category likely to grow, he offers one caveat. 'The question for OEMs that have an existing pickup in the mid-size space is what it would do to their total volume and profitability,' he says. 'Would it cannibalize sales, which is something Ford has seen with people buying Maverick instead of Ranger.' Personally, I'm ready to witness some cannibal action if it means more small trucks populating our roads again.
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