Toyota
has selected a 200-acre site in Huntsville, Alabama, for its newest engine plant
in North America.
The factory will machine and assemble V8 engines for the full-size Tundra pickup
truck made in Princeton, Indiana.
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The Huntsville plant will be Toyota’s first outside of Japan to manufacture
V8 engines. It will have an annual production capacity of 120,000 units and
represent a $US220 million investment by Toyota.
The company said the facility is expected to bring 350 new jobs to Alabama
and indirectly create work for many more. Production will begin in the summer
of 2003.
Toyota is the first company to locate in the North Huntsville Industrial Park.
The City of Huntsville purchased the 400-acre plot in April 1999 and plans to
continue to draw industry to the northwest part of the city.
The plant is the latest addition to Toyota’s increasing manufacturing investment
in the U.S. and Canada. By 2003, the automaker will have capacity to build 1.45
million cars and trucks a year, and 1.16 million engines.
Toyota currently has three engine plants in North America. Factories in West
Virginia and Kentucky both produce four-cylinder and V6 engines and a plant
in Ontario assembles four-cylinder units.
By 2003, Toyota will employ some 33,000 people throughout North America, producing
the Camry, Avalon, Sienna, Solara, Sequoia, Corolla, Tundra, and Tacoma.
The new Matrix, unveiled at the Detroit auto show, will come off a Fresno,
California assembly line in 2002, and beginning in the fall of 2003, the RX300
will be produced in Canada, becoming the first Lexus model built outside Japan.
