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Toyota Motor North America

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Toyota Motor North America

Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) is the operating subsidiary that oversees all operations of the Toyota Motor Corporation in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Its operations include research and development, manufacturing, sales, marketing, after sales and corporate functions, which are controlled by TMNA but sometimes executed by other subsidiaries and holding companies. The company is headquartered in Plano, Texas, with offices in several locations including Georgetown, Kentucky, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Toyota’s operations in North America began on October 31, 1957, and today's Toyota Motor North America was established in 2017 from the consolidation of three companies: Toyota Motor North America, Inc., which controlled Toyota’s corporate functions; Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. which handled marketing, sales, and distribution in the United States; and Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America which oversaw operations at all assembly plants in the region. While all three companies continue to exist in legal name, they operate as one company out of one headquarters campus.

In August 1957, Toyota sent three employees to the United States to show off the company's new car, the Toyopet Crown, to car dealers and the media to gauge interest in expanding sales overseas. The vehicle received positive reviews, with media outlets praising the vehicle for having 50% thicker steel than the average American car at the time and the black Deluxe model for being nicely appointed with lots of chrome and luxurious items like a radio, heater and whitewall tires which prompted the press to liken it to a "baby Cadillac". But Toyota knew from testing that the vehicle, designed for the muddy, slow, unpaved roads of Japan, had serious high-speed performance issues. When the Crown was driven on a highway, the engine suddenly began making loud noises and output dropped. But the promising initial showing, along with the strong reputation of the Crown in Japan gave Toyota a false sense of confidence and the company started to pursue exports to the United States.

Toyota’s operations in North America officially began on October 31, 1957 with the establishment of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. (TMS) which oversaw sales, marketing, and distribution of Toyota’s vehicles in the United States. The fledgling company's headquarters was located in a former Rambler dealership in Hollywood, California with a warehouse near the harbor where vehicles would be imported in Long Beach, California. Sales started on July 10, 1958, and by the end of the year, the company sold 287 Toyopet Crown sedans and one Toyota Land Cruiser.

The company faced problems almost immediately. American automakers saw the increase in sales of imported compact cars and launched several compact cars from the autumn of 1959, including the Chevrolet Corvair, Ford Falcon, and Chrysler Valiant. As a result, sales of imported European cars plunged and the Crown was a flop with buyers finding it underpowered (due to the known high-speed performance issues) and overpriced. In response, exports of the Crown to the United States were suspended in December 1960. However, the Land Cruiser gained a following, allowing the company to make a profit in 1961, but there was not yet a major market for sport-utility vehicles in the United States.

The company's first major success in the United States came in 1965 with the Toyota Corona compact car, which was redesigned specifically for the American market with a more powerful engine, factory-installed air conditioning and an automatic transmission. The Corona helped increase U.S. sales of Toyota vehicles to more than 20,000 units in 1966 (a threefold increase) and helped the company become the third-best-selling import brand in the United States by 1967. In 1968, the Toyota Corolla subcompact car was introduced to the United States and would go on to become the world’s all-time best-selling automobile. This success led Toyota to establish a more permanent presence in North America, opening a headquarters building in Torrance, California, south of Los Angeles in February 1967.

The energy crisis of the 1970s was a major turning point in the American auto industry. Before the crisis, large and heavy vehicles with powerful but inefficient engines were common. But in the years after, consumers started demanding high-quality and fuel-efficient small cars. Domestic automakers, in the midst of their malaise era, struggled to build these cars profitably, but foreign automakers like Toyota were well positioned. This, along with growing anti-Japanese sentiment, prompted the U.S. Congress to consider import restrictions to protect the domestic auto industry.

Toyota’s first manufacturing investment in the United States came in 1972 when the company struck a deal with Atlas Fabricators, to produce truck beds in Long Beach, in an effort to avoid the 25% "chicken tax" on imported light trucks introduced in 1964. By importing the truck as an incomplete chassis cab (the truck without a bed), the vehicle only faced a 4% tariff. Once in the United States, Atlas would build the truck beds and attach them to the trucks. The partnership was successful and two years later, Toyota purchased Atlas (which had been financially struggling) and it would eventually be renamed Toyota Auto Body California (TABC) as part of the company's Toyota Auto Body manufacturing subsidiary.

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