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The Toyota Truck is a compact economy pickup truck sold by Toyota and introduced in 1964. A full sized version (T100 and Tundra) are available in the North American market.

Toyota Pickups in the United States The Toyota pickup truck first appeared in the United States in 1964 under the name of "Stout." The strange, utilitarian little truck wasn't a very fast seller. In 1969, Toyota improved the truck and renamed it the "Hi-Lux." In the 1970s, inflation and a strong US dollar combined to make the Hi-Lux a popular choice. When the first Arab Oil Embargo was imposed, consumers realized that the little truck could get TWICE the fuel mileage (17 mpg estimated) of one of its bigger rivals, the Ford F-250 (8 mpg estimated). By the mid-1980s, the United States was licking its economic wounds from two Arab oil embargoes, the runaway stagflation of the 1970s, and a recession. The sames pressures which were merely squeezing the American economy were crushing Detroit and the Big 3 automakers Ford, Chrysler (now DaimlerChrysler), and GM. The Big 3 had an additional burden of being poorly positioned in their product marketing mix (very few economy cars) and faced skyrocketing labor costs. Chrysler's Lee Iacocca had just finished begging Congress for loan

guarantees to bail out the failing Chrysler corporation. The Big 3 along with the United Auto Workers union lobbied Congress to slap an import tariff on all imported pickup trucks entering the United States. This move was a direct attack on Toyota and to a lesser extent on Datsun (now called Nissan). The Big 3 saw this as a way to eliminate a competitor which was doing a superior job of competing. The UAW saw this as a way to protect union jobs from cheaper foreign labor. The politicians saw this as a way to get votes from blue collar workers and to bolster the flagging economy at the same time. The only people hurt would be Toyota and the consumers who purchased their products. The net result was that the cost of importing a truck from Japan became so high that Toyota was no longer in a good position to compete. To address this concern, Toyota formed a joint venture with General Motors (GM) in 1984 to build Toyota products in the US, for sale to the US market, using unionized UAW labor. The venture was named New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. or "NUMMI" (pronounced NUMI) for short. They first plant was built in Fremont, California just miles away from a recently closed Ford assembly plant in Milpitas, California. At the new plant, they built the US version of the Hi-Lux pickup, Geo (Chevrolet) products, and a US version of the Toyota Corolla.