Fremont Plant : GM, Toyota Celebrate Partnership

With trade tensions between the United States and Japan running high, the chairmen of General Motors and Toyota today officially dedicated a $400-million effort by the two auto giants to jointly produce 250,000 cars a year in a once-idle GM plant.

At ceremonies at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant, Japanese Ambassador Nobuo Matsunaga told auto officials and 1,200 cheering workers that the partnership could help alleviate frustrations over “the large and accumulating U.S. trade deficit.”

Matsunaga had canceled plans to attend the ceremonies because of tense trade talks in Washington but changed his mind Wednesday night and decided to come.

GM Chairman Roger B. Smith, Toyota Chairman Eiji Toyoda and plant President Tatsuro Toyoda were joined by Gov. George Deukmejian and other officials at the ribbon-cutting and the breaking of a kusudama , a ball filled with colored strings, papers and ribbons.

The ceremony at the sprawling facility on the southeastern side of San Francisco Bay came 26 months after GM and Toyota agreed to work together at the site of a GM plant that had been closed since March 4, 1982. The Fremont plant began production of Chevrolet Novas similar to Toyota Corollas on Dec. 4.

The motto of the new company is “Quality Through Teamwork,” a message repeated often on signs around the plant to emphasize the company’s intent to team the latest production methods and training techniques from Japan and the United States.

Toyota sent 150 instructors here to train American workers and about 30 have remained. About 30 U.S. workers were sent to Japan for training.

At its peak, the GM plant had 7,500 workers on two assembly lines. The new plant has 1,200 workers now and plans to expand to 2,500 by next year with an annual payroll of $100 million.

So far, 600 cars have rolled off the assembly lines, and 50,000 are expected to be manufactured this year. When the plant is in full operation by mid-1986, it is expected to produce more than 20,000 cars a month and generate $1 billion a year in sales.