Fuji Heavy To End Toyota Camry Production
No, that title is not a misprint. Fuji Heavy Industries, which current builds the Toyota Camry at an Indiana assembly plant, will stop producing the mid-size sedan for Toyota starting in 2016.
Fuji Heavy – parent company of Subaru- makes the Camry under contract for Toyota. Production will be absorbed by Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky plant that already builds the Camry. Automotive News reports that the move will free up an additional 100,000 units of capacity for Fuji Heavy, which builds Subaru cars at the plant. Fuji Heavy had sought to expand capacity sufficiently that it could build 300,000 Subaru vehicles per year at the plant – doing so will allow them to utilize the 100,000 units occupied by the Camry, as well as the 170,000 units allocated to Subaru, in order to reach their overall goal.
Georgetown is currently running flat out at 500,000 units annually, with plans to expand to 550,000 units already in the works. But there was no clarification on how Toyota would absorb a further 100,000 units, and retain the Camry’s position as America’s best-selling passenger car.
More by Derek Kreindler
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My guess would be that the Venza might possibly be getting the ax to make room for some extra Camry production. That would free up 10k units per year capacity out of the gate. Then just increase the takt time and/or add a third shift to make up the difference.
Well, this is hardly news. It was announced late last year.
The only sad thing I've read that concerns this is that the Subaru built Camry's had less warranty work than the Kentucky Camry's. Still, Subaru is probably tickled the contract is over as the Forester is selling way more than anticipated, and the remodeled Legacy's and Outback's are hitting the market shortly.
It's an easy fix: just jack the price of the car 10% and plant capacity is no longer a problem.