A growth spurt for midsize pickups

Bill Cosby has let it be known that he started out as a child.

Similarly, the less-than-full-size pickups on our roads started out being called compacts.

"But they kept getting bigger and bigger until they became midsize," recalled Tom Wilkinson, a spokesman for Chevrolet trucks. He said they got their growth spurt primarily through the burgeoning popularity of crew cabs. The convenient four-door cabs appeal to buyers who use their truck for work during the week and as family transit on weekends.

"For years, crew cabs hardly existed," Wilkinson said. "They were a real niche market. Now, they are the majority of the [midsize and full-size] trucks we build."

What's true of Chevy's Colorado is the case throughout the midsize-pickup segment. The crew-cab versions of the Toyota Tacoma and Nissan Frontier, for example, account for about 70 percent of sales.

The shrinking size differential between a midsize and full-size is equally dramatic. A Chevy Colorado midsize pickup with a regular cab is 192 inches long, less than 14 inches shorter than a full-size Silverado with a regular cab. Start comparing crew cabs and the difference can be even smaller. For example: The full-size Toyota Tundra crew cab is only 7.4 inches longer than the midsize Tacoma crew.

While midsize trucks are growing in size, their sales in the United States are shrinking.

"If you look at the compact market, it has shrunk from 8 percent of U.S. vehicle sales in 1994 to 2 percent," said Mike Levine, Ford truck spokesman.

That shrinkage is part of the reason Chrysler no longer builds the Dodge Dakota, and why Ford stopped making the Ranger for the U.S. market in December.

"The compacts grew into midsize, and as they got bigger they also grew in price and overlap with full-size trucks," Levine said. "Customers looked at the two and saw that for not much difference in price, they could get a lot more capability [with the full-size truck]."

In Ford's case, Levine felt the boundary was further blurred by the improved gas mileage obtained with its new breed of V-6 engines.

Given this situation, Levine said Ford decided to spend its development and marketing money where the sales were: the full-size F-150 pickup, the nation's best-selling vehicle.

As it turns out, Ford has handed down a minority decision on the midsizer. GM, Toyota, and Nissan have hardly given up on a market that still boasted nearly 300,000 sales in 2011. Toyota expects to produce 245,000 in 2012, even without the Ranger's 70,000.