Toyota to Build U.S. Plant, make 200,000 Cars a Year : Will Also Up Fremont Production

Toyota Motor Co. will build its own manufacturing plant in the United States by 1988 to produce about 200,000 cars a year and will expand production at its joint venture in Fremont, Calif., to provide 50,000 cars to its American dealers beginning in the fall of next year, the firm announced here today.

A second new plant, in Canada, will produce another 50,000 cars a year, the company said.

Shoichiro Toyoda, president of the company, said his firm’s board of directors earlier in the day approved the outline of plans for the No. 1 Japanese auto maker’s first independent ventures into North American production.

He would not specify when construction on the two new plants will begin or where they will be. He also gave no estimate on how many workers they will employ.

Approximate Cost

Asked by a Japanese reporter whether a rough estimate of the cost of the new U.S. plant would be “around 150 billion yen ($625 million),” Toyoda replied, “Not greatly different from that sum.”

The new U.S. plant, which Toyoda said will not be located on the West Coast, will produce about 200,000 cars a year equipped with 2,000-cc displacement engines. The model produced will be a variant of the firm’s Camry model, Toyoda added.

Lack of an American manufacturing facility of its own deprived Toyota of its position as the No. 1 foreign firm in American sales earlier this year.

Honda, now manufacturing 150,000 cars a year--while expanding capacity to 300,000 cars--at its plant in Ohio, took over the top spot among foreign auto makers.

Expected to Be First

With both Toyota’s new U.S. plant in operation and Honda’s Ohio expansion complete, Toyota’s capacity for sales in the United States will reach at least 873,760 cars, compared with 728,590 for Honda, assuming that present export limits are maintained.

Toyota’s joint venture with General Motors at Fremont, when it reaches full production, will have about the same production capacity as the new U.S. plant. Presuming employment at both plants to be the same, the new plant will employ as many as 2,500 workers.

Japanese news reports, which Toyota officials refused to confirm or deny, said earlier that the company was considering locating the new U.S. plant in either Kentucky or Tennessee.

50,000 in 1986

Toyoda said the joint venture with GM will begin producing 50,000 cars a year in the fall of 1986 and described that figure as an “addition” to the 200,000 cars a year that he said GM will procure from the plant--although GM Chairman Roger Smith, has consistently said GM intends to procure all 250,000 cars scheduled to be produced by the joint venture.

Toyoda said his firm had secured GM’s approval to have the Fremont plant sell a variation of the Toyota Corolla with a 1,600-cc displacement engine to Toyota’s dealers in the United States. The plant now supplies to GM’s Chevrolet dealers a Corolla variant, dubbed the Nova, which is equipped with a 1,600-cc engine.