Not your daughter's Prius

Bob Lutz was right, the Prius was a great marketing coup ... allows Toyota to sell gas guzzlers (note that although some 200,000 hybrids were sold in '06, that's just 1.3% of the market) :


Toyota Enters the Auto Show With a Swagger - New York Times:

Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Toyota introduced the Crew Max, a bigger, four-door version of its Tundra pickup, its largest truck sold here.

...is available with Toyota’s biggest engine, a 5.7-liter V8 with 381 horsepower.

That is a departure from Toyota’s reputation for building fuel-efficient vehicles. And it is far cry from Toyota’s first full-sized pickup, the T-100, whose lack of power and towing capability made it made it merely a pale imitation of those from G.M., Ford and Chrysler.