To defend its share in the increasingly competitive small truck space, Toyota will borrow some cool factor from action-camera maker GoPro Inc. for the truck’s first redesign in a decade. The 2016 Tacoma will be the auto industry’s first sold with a GoPro camera mount as a standard feature. For Toyota, the partnership is a low-cost way to appeal to buyers who drive through muddy Texas trails or Utah desert canyons. It’s also a notable win for GoPro as Japanese camera makers such as Sony Corp. try to crack the $2 billion action-camera market.
“These true off-roaders are out there, and they all have GoPros on their trucks,” Michael Sweers, Tacoma’s chief engineer and a GoPro camera owner, said in a phone interview. “Whether they’re fishing, off-roading, camping and so on, they’re all recording their adventures.”
The Tacoma revamp includes a more chiseled design, expanded shoulder and hip room in the interior and a more fuel efficient larger engine.
Toyota got the idea for the GoPro tie-up from mingling with off-roaders at events such as the Lone Star Toyota Jamboree in East Texas’s Barnwell Mountains and Rock Therapy in Utah’s Moab desert and canyons. In the last five years, the company has seen an “explosion” of owners bringing along cameras suction-cupped to the sides or mounted onto the windshields of their trucks.
Small pickups are regaining popularity thanks to GM’s Colorado and Canyon, which won rave reviews after their return late last year. Motor Trend magazine awarded the Colorado its truck of the year award, and GM has sold a combined 56,592 units this year through June.
