Toyota Takes on U.S. Truck Market with Friday's Plant Opening

Washington DC November 16, 2006; The AIADA newsletter reported that Toyota is placing a big bet on a big truck, built at a big plant in a big state that takes its pickups seriously — and where the rivalry for buyers has always been among the three big Detroit companies, reports The New York Times.

Tomorrow in San Antonio, Texas, Toyota will open its first-ever assembly plant dedicated solely to producing its full-size Tundra pickup. In a sign of the plant's importance to the automaker, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe will make a rare American appearance to dedicate the factory.

Given the automaker's history of manufacturing innovations many auto industry insiders are eager to see what's at the new plant. But more importantly, many are anxious to see how Toyota's venture into the big truck market will impact the ailing Detroit Three, for whom pickups and SUVs have remained critical cash cows.

"Toyota's San Antonio strategy has two profound implications," said John A. Casesa, a veteran auto analyst with the Casesa Shapiro Group.

"First, it can do serious, even potentially fatal damage to Detroit's financial health by attacking the domestic industry's last sizable source of extraordinary profits.

Second, it will, once and for all, cause many consumers to think of Toyota not as a Japanese company, but as a global company, or even an American company."