Toyota and Fuji Heavy agree to build cars in Indiana together
Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe and Fuji Presiden Kyoji Takenaka have finally met and officially agreed to build Toyota vehicles at Fuji's U.S. plant in Indiana where the Outback station wagon, Legacy sedan, Baja and B9 Tribeca are currently produced. The plant in Lafayette pumps out about 100,000 Subarus a year and analysts are saying that it will be producing about 100,000 vehicles for Toyota when the agreement goes into effect. That means either that Subaru production will be bumped or that the plant's capacity will be increased to handle the demand. Also confirmed was the official commingling of each company's engineers on various projects that were not named, but can safely be assumed to involve hybrid technology.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Richard 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
I think that plant, which once also built Isuzu's too, has currently unutilized capacity so there may be little building and not too much bumping...
...especially if Subaru does something fun like give us a turbocharged 6-cyl Tribeca.
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emulous 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
If GM is wondering why it is doing so poorly, they just need to look at what Toyota is doing with it's parital ownership of Fuji Heavy Industires (Subaru). GM had no obvious plan when they purchased Subaru, during the time of ownership it was more like what can Subaru do for GM and not a mutually beneficial arangement.
Toyota obviously had a reason for buying shares of FHI and they are immedately putting plans in place to utilize the money they spent. I bet that will not only benefit Toyota but also greatly benefit Subaru in terms of more production money, what will likely result in a bigger and better U.S. plant and what we are all assuming access to other hybrid technology and possibily and exanasion and production of their own hybrid technology that we saw in the B5 concept.
It should be interesting to watch this relationship grow and how each respective car company will grow.
Too bad, GM didn't use what it had to the benefit of themselves.
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S. Lissner 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
According to many published reports, the plant, which was designed to produce vehicles for Subaru and for Isuzu, can make about 200,000 vehicles a year. As Subaru makes about 100,000 cars a year there, that leaves plenty of capacity for Toyota.
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Ferguson McSqueege 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
And in other news, Kennyboy has no clue about what he is talking about.
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skaedenfeld 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
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Kennyboy,
Do you really think that Subaru, a company who prides itself on it's individuality would allow itself to become just another of GM's badge-engineered whores? I don't think so, buddy.
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thefultonhow 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
Wow, yeah, Subaru's boxer engines are bad news for them... all the way to the bank. Whatever the Detroit apologists say, GM is doing poorly and Subaru is doing well.
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jeffrey 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
Sorry to pile on, Kennyboy, but here goes:
"Boxster" is a Porsche model. "Boxer" is the engine type, and I don't think it's "self-proclaimed" - I doubt Subaru coined the phrase. Coincidentally, it's Porsche that also uses boxer engines. (When are those German guys gonna get with it and ditch those peculiar Porsche engines for something more conventional? ...Right.)
Subaru DID try selling a badge-engineered GM model - the Traviq minivan, sold in Japan. It was a flop - folks didn't want to buy a Subaru that didn't have Subaru characteristics (like, ahem, the boxer engine).
As far as platform superiority, the Legacy/Outback - an extended version of which Subaru's crossover is based on - is one of the six best-rated for safety by the IIHS. Didn't see any lambda-based vehicles on the list.
And I'm not sure how Toyota's gonna "do whatever it feels like" with Subaru when they've only got 8.7% of the stock - far from a controlling share.
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2Suave 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
Toyota will probably use Subaru's all wheel drive technology for some upcoming "crossover" vehicles.
AWD is the main feature that differentiates Subarus from most other cars, so that's likely to be what Toyota wanted when it bought Fuji stock from GM.
GM never developed a worthwhile relationship with Subaru (Fuji), a company that builds better cars than GM does. GM's head is still in its ass--will it ever get out?
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Richard 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
KennyBoy,
I just turned 96k on my boxer subaru engine.
When I changed the oil at 95k, the 6 quarts that went in replaced the EXACTLY 6 quarts that drained out.
You got a better 200+ HP engine than that?
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Matt Keegan 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
Too bad the "B9" is such a homely vehicle:
http://www.thearticlewriter.com/subaru-b9-tribeca-ugly-or-not.htm
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