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Toyota has announced plans to close the last auto plant on the West Coast next March, prompting angry objections from the United Auto Workers, community groups and politicians throughout the state of California. The shutdown of the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI) plant in Fremont, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco, marks the first time the Japanese automaker has deviated from its policy of maintaining employment...
...been under pressure from the government's auto task force to cut brands, and Pontiac, one of the brands sacrificed as GM restructured, was a big customer of the NUMMI facility. Toyota pleaded with GM to stay in the venture and offered to build other vehicles at the plant for GM, but to no avail...
Toyota's longstanding commitment to stable employment is being challenged by heavy losses the company has sustained over the past 15 months. It lost $7 billion during its last fiscal year, and more red ink is flowing this year. And the recession and the drop in auto sales in the U.S. saddled Toyota with excess capacity in the U.S., leaving it little choice but to cut production, says David Cole of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. (Read "GM and Germany Still Wrangling Over Opel...
Further, GM's decision to leave NUMMI, which wasn't eligible for bailout money, made the plant any easy candidate for a shutdown, since Toyota's plants in Kentucky, Indiana, Texas and Alabama are all newer and nonunion, Cole says. United Auto Workers officials organized a large protest outside the NUMMI plant last week. (Read "Why Volkswagen Is Powering Through the Recession...
Negotiations between GM and Magna - based in Aurora, Ont., it's one of the world's biggest auto-parts suppliers, with annual revenue of $23.7 billion - have hit one roadblock after another. A key sticking point is disagreement over Magna's right to use GM's technology and engineering, particularly in Russia and Eastern Europe, where the parts company has plans for aggressive expansion. (See the most exciting cars...