Toyota: Plant Closures To Spread To Europe
“Toyota is considering halting production at its factory at Burnaston, near Derby, because of collapsing sales amid the car company’s recall crisis,” London’s Times reports.
This comes on the heels of reported plans to shut two down two plants in the United States for a total of 14 days. According to the Times, Toyota is “reviewing production at its European factories.”
Toyotas recall led to “a collapse in sales for the world’s largest carmaker,” as the Times put it.
Toyota’s British plant in Burnaston (Avensis, Auris) employs 3,500 people. Toyota’s engine factory in Deeside gives jobs to another 500. Toyota had already announced plans last month to cut one in five of its workers at Burnaston because of tumbling production levels.
Elsewhere in Europe, Toyota has production plants in France, (Yaris), in Turkey, (Verso and Auris), and in the Czech Republic (Aygo).
Toyota said it wants to mothball at least one production line in Europe.
Whereas the US is in a Toyota frenzy, all quiet at the European front. No official figures of incidents in the UK relating to faulty Toyotas have been released by Vosa, the British vehicle safety agency, nor by the UK Department for Transport. Toyota sais it has no reports of deaths relating to faulty vehicles anywhere in Europe.
However, the European car market is consolidating with the cash-for-clunkers initiatives being phased out. Bad headlines from the U.S. on top of a shrinking market are not inducive to great sales.
And while we are looking at Toyota from a British perspective, read this one. It might convince you to take the train instead. If those darned trains would just stay on track.
Update: According to the Derby Telegraph, “a spokeswoman for the Burnaston plant said that the company was not considering shutting the factory.” Well, halting production and shutting the factory are different. Or maybe, the Times is wrong.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Ms. Levecque - Toyota makes the Aygo in a JV with PSA (107 and C1) in the Czech Republic. These vehicles are all fitted with the common suspect brake pedal. I don't think that anybody can seriously blame an assembler for a design flaw. As for the dealer comments about the gas pedal Riko, you can hardly blame them. So many customers who turn up in a dealership have failed to read a manual, do the obvious, would like to offset a stupid mistake by blaming the car manufacturer, etc. As there are no known reports of any customers being involved in an accident due to one of the 3 recent recalls (only 2 are happening in Europe), then the dealer really didn't have any information on which to judge your wife's complaint. We all know something more about it now, but it's bizarre to criticise them for something they couldn't possibly know about at the time. I expect those dealers were as shocked as everybody else by the size and extent of this recall.
Gotta love those Toyota guys. Volumes down? Cut overhead and expense immediately. Probably not much savings available in Europe, I suspect, as they've likely got the equivalent of the UAW job bank... at least. Here? Feel the burn, baby.