Midsize Truck Shootout: Toyota Tacoma comes out on top
ONTARIO, Calif. -- They're practical and fun, and would seem right for the times. But somehow, midsize pickups just aren't taken seriously.
Their sales are just 20% of full-size models', according to sales tracker Autodata.
Roughly 300,000 were sold last year, vs. 1.5 million full-size trucks.
To figure out why they are still around, and which is best, Cars.com's PickupTrucks.com website and USA TODAY tested seven models for the Midsize Pickup Truck Shootout.
The smallest pickups really have grown into midsize machines, though sometimes they still are called compacts.
Seven trucks were tested, quite a few for a segment so small — and a reason it's hard to make money selling midsize pickups, having to split a modest market so many ways.
All trucks were 2012s, except for the 2011 Ranger. Ford killed it after the 2011 model, but it was in production at the time of the Shootout, so it was included.
The judges were USA TODAY's Chris Woodyard; PickupTrucks.com editor Mark Williams; Dan Sanchez, author and editor of a number of truck publications; and Trevor Reed, editor of Work Truck Review and freelancer.
Their collective view: Toyota Tacoma was the clear winner.
"The Tacoma is getting better and better," wrote the judges. "There's a lot of truck here for the money."
Testers pounded each truck nearly 200 miles over freeways, byways and the steep mountains of Southern California's so-called Inland Empire. They were tested on dynamometers to verify power, accelerated full-throttle to measure quickness, and braked full-bore for stopping distance.
All performed well overall, and their practicality was obvious. But midsize pickups are not a commodity; the Shootout showed significant differences.
The Chevrolet Colorado, GMC Canyon, Honda Ridgeline, Nissan Frontier, Suzuki Equator and Tacoma were four-door crew cabs with four-wheel or all-wheel drive and automatic transmissions. Ranger was a smaller, extended-cab model.
There is no Ranger crew cab. Ford, instead, sold something similar as Explorer Sport Trac. Surveys showed that buyers would pay more for the Explorer name.
Ridgeline is unlike the others, very loosely based on Honda's Odyssey van and built with unibody construction. Autodata puts it into a "specialty pickups" category and considers it a full-size. Shootout's experts believe it makes more sense to compare it with midsize models, so included it.
Buyers of these trucks are a mix. "You have families buying them, as well as people involved in construction," says Toyota spokesman Sam Butto. Others "like the utility, but don't need a full-size pickup."
Test models ranged from $27,890 for the Ranger to $34,635 for Tacoma. Full-size trucks aren't much more expensive.
Ford says it killed the U.S. Ranger after the 2011 model because of lack of interest from buyers. But it's going ahead with a new Ranger abroad. General Motors is killing the GMC Canyon and Chevrolet Colorado after the 2012 models. But GM had second thoughts and now expects to sell a Colorado replacement in 2013 or so.
How the midsize models finished:
