Tim Esterdahl | Feb 19, 2014 | Comments 17

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Tundraheadquarters.com just received word, from a credible source, that the 2015 Toyota Tundra will not offer a regular cab. While regular cab sales have been on the decline, new CAFE regulations and tiny profits from this cab style are helping to spur the end. Overall, this news isn’t unexpected.

The regular cab pickup has been a staple offering for decades and has become somewhat synomous with fleet customers and drag racers. Yet, this customer base have been shrinking with many fleet customers moving up to larger cabs since the price difference is becoming minimal. Most manufactures agree that the most popular pickup configuration is a crew cab with regular cab accounting for a very small percentage.

We told you back in 2011 that several manufactures suggested then that the regular cab could be on the cutting block. The economics of production are such that there is very little difference between producing a regular cab and double cab. In truth, every new truck announcement these days seems to be met with speculation if this year, is the year, that the regular cab goes away.

Working against regular cab pickups are several things:

Popularity

Manufacture costs equal to or similar to double cab

New CAFE regulations that measure by footprint. The smaller footprint of a regular cab, regular bed truck mean it must get better fuel economy than a larger double or crew cab. Manufactures and consumers don’t seem interested in a more expensive regular cab.

On the flip side of this news is by dropping production of this cab style, Toyota could possibly expand production of other trim lines and/or models. As we have been hearing for months and months, Toyota has a capacity issue and this would certainly alleviate some of it.

Toyota told us, “Toyota does not comment on future product. Therefore, we have nothing to announce at this time regarding the future of the Tundra regular cab.”

What do you think? Will the regular cab loss matter much?

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