Toyota Corolla–Based Small Pickup Could Battle the Ford Maverick

Toyota is reportedly considering adding a new small pickup truck to its lineup that would be based on the Corolla.This new vehicle would compete with the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz.Rumors suggest it could arrive in 2027 and that it would be built at Toyota’s plant in Mississippi that currently builds the Corolla.

Toyota already has the mid-size and full-size segments covered with the Tacoma and Tundra pickups, but there could be room beneath these trucks for a new smaller, crossover-based pickup. As reported by Automotive News, Toyota is considering adding a Corolla-based compact pickup truck that would compete with the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz. As for the name, your guess is as good as ours, but we wouldn’t be shocked if Toyota brought back a name from its history such as Stout—a moniker it first applied to a small pickup sold in the U.S. in the 1960s.

Much like the relationship between the Maverick and the Bronco Sport and the Santa Cruz and the Tucson, the Corolla-based pickup would likely share components with the Corolla Cross subcompact SUV. As shown in our illustration, it could combine a five-seat crew-cab configuration with a short cargo bed to replace the crossover’s hatch.

ILLUSTRATION BY BEN SUMMERELL-YOUDE/FOX SYNDICATION|Car and Driver

Hybrid power is almost a certainty, given that it’s Toyota we’re talking about. We’d guess that the Corolla Cross’ 196-hp, all-wheel-drive hybrid setup with an EPA combined rating of 42 mpg would be the standard powertrain in the pickup. It may be beefed up a bit to help with towing and payload capacity. The Maverick’s optional hybrid drivetrain, for reference, produces 191 horsepower and is rated at 37 mpg combined, but it currently comes only with front-wheel drive.

The supposed arrival of this new pickup is still a few years away, so it stands to reason that it would be based on a facelifted or redesigned Corolla Cross rather than the version on sale today that arrived for the 2022 model year. While the Corolla Cross is built at Toyota’s joint factory with Mazda in Alabama, AN’s report says that the pickup would be built alongside the Corolla sedan in Mississippi.

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Senior Editor

Despite being raised on a steady diet of base-model Hondas and Toyotas—or perhaps because of it—Joey Capparella nonetheless cultivated an obsession for the automotive industry throughout his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He found a way to write about cars for the school newspaper during his college years at Rice University, which eventually led him to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his first professional auto-writing gig at Automobile Magazine. He has been part of the Car and Driver team since 2016 and now lives in New York City.