While Ford and Hyundai are reaping the rewards of bringing the Maverick and Santa Cruz compact bakkies to market, other brands, including Toyota are reportedly considering taking the leap into the compact bakkie segment too.

*Picture courtesy of Drivingline

Cast your memory back to 2015, the year Hyundai captured our imagination with the Santa Cruz concept. Hyundai’s compact bakkie intentions were mostly well-received and even bakkie lovers right here in South Africa were clamoring for Hyundai to give it the green light for production with the hope of right-hand-drive production which hasn’t materialised yet.

That green light came in 2017 but production of the Santa Cruz only began from mid-2021 at Hyundai’s Alabama production plant in the USA.

The Korean Santa Cruz needed competition though and what a better brand than Ford to take the fight to Hyundai with the new Maverick!

Both models are selling very strongly in the US and their sales success has other brands interested.

Volkswagen Group recently announced the revival of the Scout brand which will see an “all-electric pick-up and rugged SUV” come to market in the USA and recent comments from Toyota officials in the land of the free point to the possibility of Toyota producing a new compact bakkie to rival the Santa Cruz and Maverick.

Speaking to US publication, Motortrend, executive vice president of sales for Toyota Motor North America, Bob Carter alluded to the real possibility for Toyota to enter the compact bakkie fray, “One of the spaces we’re looking at—that won’t be short-term—is where the compact pickup truck is going. You have Santa Cruz and Maverick on the market, and it will be interesting to see Scout. Today, we have the market really well covered with Tacoma, but that [a compact pickup] could be a possibility and something we continue to look at”.

Carter’s colleague, Cooper Ericksen, group vice president of product planning and strategy, commented “If there’s a customer that needs a rugged, smaller body-on-frame vehicle, we can consider that, but if it’s more for urban use and less extreme off-road, then it would make more sense to use the TNGA unibody platform”.

Toyota’s TNGA platform underpins vehicles such as the Prius, RAV4 and Corolla and if Toyota does decide to produce a unibody bakkie, it’s likely that the firm will draw on its vast experience in hybrid powertrains to motivate the newcomer.

Carter also hinted that an official announcement could be made in 2023 which means that we might see a new small Toyota bakkie in 2024/25.

Watch this space!

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