2014 Toyota Tundra makes another run at pickup loyalists

Once upon a time, Toyota looked ready to put a final knife into Detroit's automotive business by building the most American of vehicles, the full-size pickup truck. Just as it conquered cars and SUVs, Toyota's eventual dominance over the Old Three was considered a fait accompli by many observers. And yet here we are, seven years later, and Toyota has taken to refreshing it's Tundra for 2014 just to keep its small slice of the market from shrinking further. What went wrong?

When it first launched the full-size Tundra in 2006, Toyota set a goal of building more than 200,000 Tundras a year, talking up how the company had devoted itself to studying American consumers, going so far as to have the Japanese chief engineer make sure drivers could wear cowboy hats comfortably. And on paper, the trucks matched up well to the capabilities of the trucks from Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge.