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On social media platforms, bad news generates a lot of pageviews, likes, and subscriptions. Even if it’s all made-up rubbish. Case in point, the Toyota Tacoma, the dominant mid-size truck in America. It underwent a generational shift last year, emerging from the chaos of the post-COVID shortages and closures. Here is how social media chose to cover the Tacoma during its transition period:
The Car Guy Online - Toyota Tacoma Sales Down 60%. Are Fanboys Leaving Toyota?
Rev Nation - Toyota Has Gone Off The Rails: Who’s Buying This Junk?
Kirk Kreifels - Diving DEEP into the new Toyota Tacoma's poor sales // Is there a solution?
One commenter under the Car Guy Online video offered,
Who wants a thin-skinned, cheaply made, Mexican-built, plasticky, four-banger truck that can’t tow anything and costs 65k?
Another chimed in saying,
The fanboys were fanboys because they were guaranteed a great value in both high residual value and long-term reliability. None of which is any longer guaranteed.
All of the above offer some extremely well-produced content. Flashy. Catchy. And bad news for fans of America’s best-selling mid-size truck over the past couple of decades. They all offer some information about why Tacoma had a temporary sales dip, but was it valid, or just made up?
Heck, even Tacoma World online had a popular post titled “60% Tacoma drop in sales for 2024.” Et tu, Tacoma world? In that story, some Tacoma fans wrote in and offered the following opinions:
- LilTexan22 - “Everyone is finally waking up and not willing to pay 60-65k for a midsize pickup truck. Who knows how expensive the iForce Max Tacoma will be? It’s stupid, ridiculous, when you could buy a full-size truck that costs less and does more.”
- SH10151 - “Mexican-built midsize pick up truck now costs as much a luxury German SUV at an APR that will make your eyes water.”
Toyota Tacoma 2025 Deliveries
Toyota is on track to deliver 262,000 Tacoma pickups in America in 2025. With over 130,000 units delivered in 2025, it has now matched its prior historical high volumes for deliveries.
Tacoma Deliveries and Generational Changes
Toyota’s Tacoma did see a dip in deliveries during its generational change. Precisely as one would expect. America’s former top-selling model, the Tesla Model Y, just changed generations, and it saw a meaningful delivery dip. The RAV4, America’s second-best-selling model, will change generations this fall. Expect a dip in deliveries. High-volume models always show a temporary decline in deliveries when a generational change occurs. It happens with trucks, EVs, and crossovers.
The latest Toyota delivery report has been released, and a comparison of Q1 last year to this past Q1 (2025) shows that the Tacoma has returned to full production. Prior to the generational change in 2021, 2022, and 2023, Toyota was able to build and deliver roughly 20,000 Tacomas per month. Through all of 2025, it has again produced and delivered roughly 22,000 Tacomas per month. That represents the full 100% capacity of Toyota’s Tacoma factories, and that is precisely what Toyota sells. Every Taco sells, and many Tacomas are sold as they are inbound to dealers. There is no delay in sales or deliveries, and skeptics who theorize the truck is overpriced, has the wrong type of powertrain, is built in the wrong country, or is too “thin-skinned” to be successful are simply mistaken. The Tacoma today is as popular as it has ever been.
The Smaller Than Full-size Truck Market Has Expanded
Interestingly, the “smaller than full-size” truck market has grown significantly. With sedans now gone from many brands, trucks like the Tacoma, Ranger, Ridgeline, Canyon, Colorado, along with the newish Gladiator and Maverick, are all doing very well. Here are some facts about the segment.
1) The Ford Maverick is a huge win for Ford, which is now delivering over 14,000 “Mexican-built” Mavericks per month.
2) Honda’s “American-built” Ridgeline pickup deliveries are up 23% in 2025, and in June, the company nearly surpassed 5,000 trucks delivered in one month. Ridgeline is now outselling the GMC Canyon and closing in on Ranger and Frontier.
3) Ranger deliveries have doubled, and Ford says it’s the Raptors that are responsible for the growth surge.
So what’s our point? Simply that, even in a now very crowded market with some fantastic offerings, the Tacoma is back on top and has not lost any deliveries, since Toyota sells every one it wishes to build.
What’s New For 2025 in the Tacoma Lineup?
The biggest change for Tacoma in its new generation is that the powertrains are all updated. All three of the engine options are now turbocharged, and the top i-FORCE MAX hybrid engine has a whopping 465 lb-ft of torque. There are now 11 trims, three of which are Toyota Racing Development (TRD) trims, plus the addition of a new TrailHunter trim. The Tacoma starts at around $33K, and rises to about $67K.
Were you taken in by the fear, uncertainty, and doubt stories that poured forth on social media? Did you really think that Toyota would relinquish its top spot in the midsize truck segment?
Click the red Add New Comment link below and share your thoughts with us.
John Goreham is a long-standing member of the New England Motor Press Association and an expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE int). In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can connect with John on LinkedIn and follow his work on his personal X channel or on our X channel. Please note that stories carrying John's by-line are never AI-generated, but he does employ grammar and punctuation software when proofreading and he also uses image generation tools.
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