Preparing for what they insisted was the most important new-vehicle introduction in Toyota's history, members of the 2007 Tundra team kept in mind a cautionary tale.

It's the story of the fellow who builds the boat of his dreams in his backyard. Deep into the project, the guy realizes he's built something so big he can't move it to the water without tearing down his garage.

"Well in advance of ever thinking about marketing strategies and launch plans we thought about that guy," said the executive who oversaw the new Tundra's introduction, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A.'s senior vice president of automotive operations Don Esmond. The backyard boat story was "a metaphor for being so focused on one aspect of a project that you lose sight of other, equally important concerns."

Esmond said his team made a vow: "We are not going to be that guy."

The redesigned 2007 Tundra rolled into showrooms in February as the first Toyota with the mass and muscle to compete directly with Ford, General Motors, and Dodge in the only automotive segment domestic brands still dominate: the 2.2-million annual sales full-size pickup market.

Toyota's redesigned 2007 Tundra went on sale in February.

By early May, it had become clear that Toyota hadn't had to raze any garages to launch Tundra. Moving the new truck to buyers, however, has nonetheless proved an uncomfortably tight fit for an automaker unaccustomed to failure on any scale.

Big Panel Gaps, Big Truck A canon of automotive design holds that the narrowest possible seams between body panels is a badge of engineering exactness. Not if you're trying to appeal to buyers of big pickup trucks, however. Toyota says "panel gaps" in the 2007 Tundra were left intentionally wide because designers believed slightly wider gaps in key areas make the truck look bolder. "Although the panel gaps are every bit as precise and accurate as those in the Camry, they are slightly wider than they could have been," Tundra chief engineer Yuichiro Obu said. Tundra senior creative designer Craig Kember put it more bluntly. "We saw this as a big opportunity to design a truly bad-ass truck ... for the American full-size truck buyer."

Unanticipated problems with Tundra's pricing, safety ratings, and even model availability tarnished the launch of one of the highest-profile models ever from an import brand in the U.S. Tundra is Toyota's highly anticipated and hugely expensive plunge into the one high-volume market segment in which it hasn't yet had a game-changing impact.

Tundra's introduction comes at a time when the toughest industry watchers are giving Toyota little margin for error. Surpassing General Motors in the first quarter of 2007 as the world's largest vehicle producer put the Japanese giant under scrutiny for any missteps that hint it's growing too quickly to maintain its legendary reputation for business strategy and vehicle quality.

Not Just Another Truck
"The full-size pickup truck market is, by far, the single largest opportunity for Toyota's future growth plans in the U.S.," Esmond said. The automaker hopes to sell 200,000 Tundras in 2007 and 220,000 in 2008. Those numbers are dwarfed by the domestics--796,000 F-Series pickups were sold last year--but even 200,000 would be a 60-percent increase over 2006 sales of the previous-generation Tundra.

Moreover, Tundra is an indispensable ingredient in Toyota's mission to be considered as American as, well, NASCAR. In fact, it's being promoted heavily at NASCAR Nextel Cup races--the showcase of stockcar racing in which Toyota for the first time is a participant as its Camry runs alongside Ford Fusions, Chevrolet Monte Carlos, and Dodge Chargers.

"Tundra is by far the most American new product launch in Toyota history," Esmond said. It's the first major product engineered, designed, styled, researched, and marketed entirely by Toyota's U.S. development team. To underscore the truck's red, white, and blue bloodline, Toyota builds Tundra in Indiana and at a new plant constructed specifically for it in San Antonio, Texas, ground zero for American pickup truck culture.

"I can make it short and sweet," said Tundra chief engineer Yuichiro Obu, "our goal was to produce what customers will say is the best American full-size pickup truck on the market."

To meet its sales goals, the new Tundra must shed its smaller, less-powerful predecessors' image as light-duty "town trucks" and appeal to those who need brawny pickups to make a living. That's not just an image thing; ranchers, farmers, construction workers, and utility companies are core users who must keep buying big pickups even when high gas prices frighten off the personal-use poseurs.

"Earning this customer's loyalty represents our greatest opportunity for long-term sustained growth and profitability in the American market," Esmond said.

Toyota aims to sell 200,000 Tundras in 2007 and 220,000 in 2008.

Heeding the backyard boat builder's lesson, Toyota's pre-launch preparation was broad and deep. Its market researchers virtually lived with the tough-truck crowd, gaining insight that led to such features as a towing package fortified with an automatic-transmission cooler and a water-cooled oil cooler. Nearly 25,000 dealership sales and service employees got special training in dealing with truck customers. Dealership loaner fleets were salted with Tundras so trades people wouldn't suffer job downtime. Selling the Tundra, Esmond told reporters in September 2006, "will require a wholesale shift in the way we do business."

Unforeseen Problems
Bumps in the road appeared even before the '07 model went on sale. Industry watchers were taken aback with the truck's prices, generally several thousand dollars higher than those of domestic rivals. Regular cabs started at $22,290, with the top-of-the-line Tundra starting at $41,850. That compared to a range of $18,275-$39,355 for the Ford F-150, the segment sales leader, and $17,860-$38,090 for the Chevrolet Silverado, the year's only other redesigned full-size pickup.

Toyota countered that Tundra's base prices included many features that cost extra on competitors, including such items as antilock four-wheel disc brakes, an antiskid system, dual-zone climate control, and curtain side airbags; all these are standard on every Tundra. Toyota said it would not compromise on safety by decontenting Tundra to lower base prices.

The issue of safety, it turned out, put Toyota on the defensive again in March, when Tundra failed to get top ratings in government crash tests. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tested Tundra regular and extended cab models and awarded only four of a possible five stars for driver and passenger safety in frontal impact. Every domestic-brand rival scored five stars in the test.

Tundra engineers vowed to find out why millions of development dollars and months of internal testing didn't result in NHTSA's highest ratings. But Ford already was making an issue of the crash-test gap with aggressive comparison ads that highlighted F-150's five-star rating and, while not mentioning Tundra by name, pointedly noted that "some of the others didn't do as well."

Regular cab Tundras are priced at $22,290 and the top-of-the-line Tundras start at $41,850.

Proud to finally have a pickup that could climb into the ring with the big domestics, Toyota was learning it would also have to slug it out with them over cash incentives. Indeed, Ford, GM, and Dodge did nothing but increase the pressure, ratcheting up their incentive deals in the wake of Tundra's launch. Dodge offered up to $5,000 cash back on Ram, F-150 and Silverado had $3,000 on the hood.

"The Most Valuable Currency"
Significantly, there was no cash back on the Tundra CrewMax crew cab. Demand for the largest model in the lineup was strong--maybe too strong. Toyota discovered itself scrambling to fix model-mix projections that had left dealers without enough crew cab models and too many regular cabs. That will take time to correct because the new San Antonio plant wasn't slated to start building the CrewMax until August, leaving the Indiana facility as the only source for the four-door cab.

Similarly off was Toyota's pre-launch estimate that Tundra's most powerful engine, the 381-horsepower 5.7-liter V8, would account for 60 percent of sales. Demand was running at 80 percent. Toyota says Tundra is on pace to reach its 200,000-unit sales target for 2007. The conquest sales necessary to reach that goal have caused unforeseen problems of their own.

Owners of domestic-brand pickups are trading them in on Tundras at rates far higher than expected. That's burdened Toyota dealers with a surplus of used F-Series, Silverados, and Rams. It's left their sales and finance personnel adjusting to an unanticipated number of buyers who owe more on their trade-ins than those trucks are worth, complicating trade-in allowances and price talks.

Of course, every new-vehicle launch has its share of unexpected hurdles. At least Toyota heeded the lesson of the backyard boat builder in one very literal way. It realized many of its dealerships would need to enlarge service bays, parking spaces, even showroom access doors to accommodate the 2007 Tundra, the largest vehicle ever to wear the Toyota badge. The company, however, is not reimbursing dealers the hundreds of thousands of dollars it can cost to make such alterations. Instead, the incentive is favorable vehicle allocations. "More Toyotas," Esmond said, "is the most valuable currency."