Nissan has no room to miss the bulls-eye.
Toyota took years to get its Tundra right, evolving it from the small, underpowered T100 that it sold 1993-1998. Its replacement, the almost-big-enough Tundra, was sold from 2000 to 2006.
Then the bigger new Tundra made its debut in 2007 -- as the recession loomed and with it, ruinous impact on new-car and new-truck sales.
That soured the Japanese executives on the Tundra, which depends on the U.S. market instead of being a global product. That wariness kept the company from spending heavily on new powertrains for the updated 2014 model, even as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler all sunk big dollars into new engines and transmissions, as well as technology and styling changes.
Tundra sales are running about 10,000 a month -- far more than the Titan's 1,000 a month, but well off the Ford F-series and Chevrolet Silverado pace: about 60,000 and 45,000 a moth, respectively.