What happened to the Tundra takeover?

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Toyota's priciest ute and overall vehicle has far from taken off in Australia so far, with the Tundra shifting just 60 units in January.

(171 units). Only the bigger version of Ram's ute sold less units overall, with the 2500 moving 34 units.

would "hold its own".

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“This arvo, for its market, is as right as ron. It's gonna have a fair dinkum start. No worries, mate,” Senior Toyota executive Sean Hanley said to the reporter from CarsGuide back in November.

We'll have to wait and see if it's a sustainable goer. The question is whether that particular market keeps expanding.

I reckon Tundra will be able to keep up.

The executive went on to highlight the Tundra's "good, strong demand", before commenting that the Walkinshaw team behind the remanufacturing program "have got good job prospects.”

Walkinshaw, which is Toyota's manufacturing partner in Australia, is just as optimistic, with their executives saying they're producing five cars a day, or up to 110 per month. That would mean they're making about 1300 vehicles a year, whereas their demand in January would suggest they couldn't reach that number and might only sell about 720 units.

Fair dinkum, as of last November, it's been reported that 600 Tundras have already been converted.

Sales have fallen short of that target, making it a rare phenomenon in Toyota's lineup – a car where demand is outstripping supply.

It's worth noting that around 300 motor vehicles were handed over to customers and workers as part of the testing and validation phase, and the brand clocked up 89 units in November, 136 in December, and 60 in January. That's a total of 585 vehicles, which still hasn't used up all 600 vehicles converted by mid-November, not factoring in any that've been converted since.

It's early days for the Tundra in Australia, but only time will tell if the model reaches the heights achieved by other Toyota models in our market.

Toyota Australia said: "It's still pretty early days, but we're as happy as Larry with the reaction to Tundra since it officially hit the market in mid-November. Our forward orders are tracking in line with what we were expecting and we're looking forward to shaking things up with the introduction of a new premium model in Q2 of next year."