The Toyota Camry which is among most popular car models in United States has retained this position due to versatility and comfort. Since 2007, Subaru has been bas been making the Camry at Indiana but now it will end production of Toyota products and will continue manufacturing only Subaru’s cars. Therefore Camry production will shift from Indiana to Georgetown, Kentucky by 2016 to concentrate on producing for local markets. The Lafayette production unit at Indiana will be used by its Toyota’s partner Fuji Heavy Industries Limited which under Subaru brand will increase capacity to 300,000 and use left over space, equipment and manpower which Toyota cannot take to Kentucky.
Toyota Camry
Camry’s being Toyota’s largest selling brand has to built every 65 seconds to meet constant demand therefore the Kentucky factory which already makes Avalon, Venza, and hybrid versions of Camry and Avalon has to now make 100,000 units more of regular Camry also. Since Toyota has not stated anything about expansion of Kentucky unit or about making another unit in Kentucky and has emphatically refuted all claims of meeting local demand with exports from Japan, it remains to be seen how it will handle existing Camry demand. Toyota has recently presented latest model of Camry at New York Auto Show which has been completely revamped except for its roof. However shift of Camry will not lead to creation of new jobs at Subaru’s plant in Indiana as its owner Subaru-Fuji will use Toyota employees only.
Toyota collaborates with Subaru-Fiji Heavy in Indiana to make cars like Subaru BRZ and Scion FR-S sports coupe as it has a 16 percent stake in the company. While making the Camry at Indiana, Subaru was also making Outback, Legacy and Tribeca under supervision of Toyota’s engineering team. The new Camry now has more edgy exteriors with attractive grille design and also a wide air-dam with by honeycomb design cutting through bumper to protruding outwards. In recent years Subaru’s products are finding great demand in United States and within past five years its sales have jumped by 26 percent and now amount to 424683 units per annum. Though the production of Camry will be stopped by Subaru, the relationship with Toyota will continue and both firms will collaborate to share clean technology information.
Toyota is also carrying out another large consolidation effort by moving its engineering and manufacturing activities in California to Plano Texas. This will help the auto major to bring together all corporate operations under one roof though it will also entail moving more than 1550 workers to this new location This consolidation operations involve moving 300 production engineering activities from Erianger to Georgetown in Kentucky and addition of 750 new jobs at the same plant to enable production of Toyota’s Lexus ES 350. Though industry followers are amazed about how Toyota will handle production of so many models in one place which is already working to full capacity, its senior executives have assured that since the Georgetown Kentucky unit already makes 300,000 Camrys per annum it can adjust additional capacity when required to meet spurt in demand or cut down.
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Tagged: Toyota Camry
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