Toyota's next step towards world domination - home construction
Toyota has been described as some as being a great manufacturing company that just happens to build cars. The company is taking that to heart as it applies its famed mass-production techniques to the housing market. Selling for around a quarter-million bucks, the metal-framed pre-fab modules or "units" are 85% completed before they leave the factory. After transportation to the assembly site, a dozen or so units are stacked like Lego blocks to achieve the desired living space. The company states that it has no intention to go global with its home construction, likely because this building style limits the market for such a product.
Our readers who are well versed in automobile-related history have likely come across a wide variety of products built by domestic automakers over the years; for example, my in-laws still have a '50s-era International Harvester refrigerator at their cabin.
Check out more info on Toyota's corporate website here.[Source: Toronto Star]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Howard Kerr 2:39PM (6/16/2006)
Isn't this actually old news? or has Toyota had this in the planning stages for so long it just "seems" like old news? I'm sure I first read reports of this 5-10 years ago.
Many Japanese companies have diversified over the years. Bridgestone, for example, sells bicycles in Japan...and I suppose other Asian markets. I have owned 4 or 5 Panasonic bicycles and still have one. Usually, this diversification comes about when a company wants to keep it's employees busy during a sales downturn or it buys out a customer or supplier. Ford Motor Company operated like this soon after it got started, but has since divested interest in most of it's suppliers or customers.
Yeah, it is an unusual market change for Toyota...but hey, ALL their customers need homes and/or garages.
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David 2:42PM (6/16/2006)
In my household the name for a refrigerator was "Frigidaire," made by GM until they sold the division in '79.
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Glenn A. 2:58PM (6/16/2006)
A millionaire named Powell Crosley started with radios, added refrigerators and then before WW2, he started building 2 cylinder air cooled, tiny, automobiles. The plant in Ohio would retool its refrigerator assembly line, and presto, they'd run a batch of cars off (no, I'm not joking - they were pretty small cars).
After the war, Crosley added televisions, and bought a "Cobra" engine design from the war office - it was a COpper BRased sheet-metal engine (albeit thick sheetmetal) which had been designed for use in Navy torpedos (no I'm not making this up, either!)
Needless to say and engine designed to last a few hundred to thousand yards was not suitable for cars, so - at his own expense - Crosley developed a cast iron block engine around the same internal components and had them installed in the customer's cars.
The engine was a single over head camshaft high RPM engine with four cylinders and liquid cooled. It went on to become basis of the only 4-stroke outboard motor in the 1960's and early 1970's, first called Homelite then Fisher-Pierce (my dad has one of the last
F-P's). Crosley made sedans, wagons and sports cars.
So, had Crosley been able to hold off losses in his auto division beyond 1952, the Volkswagen beetle might have had some home-grown competition all along.
Crosley owned radio stations and had other businesses. He was an entrepeneur, and had what might be considered an early business conglomerate.
IF Toyota ever do decide to build prefab homes in the US, I hope they establish their business in northwestern Indiana, so when they put their US competition out of business, the Amish and Mennonite workforce in the area can move to Toyota!
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Ben 2:59PM (6/16/2006)
"In my household the name for a refrigerator was "Frigidaire," made by GM until they sold the division in '79."
that is nothing :P
I used to use ball-pens made by mitsubishi.
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Jeff 3:15PM (6/16/2006)
In the early '70's my Dad bought a Philco Ford TV.It even had the blue oval logo.It was really poor quality,so no one was disappointed when a power surge blew it up 3 years later.
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Kernie Anderson 3:59PM (6/16/2006)
Not to purposely go off topic, but is it just me, or does that bottom photo have a Mid-'80's Chevrolet Chevette sitting in it's parking area...? Hopefully that is not what one would have to resort to to afford a home like these!
To get back ON subject, when my Grandfather passed away, one of the things that they had stashed away was an old Motorola Record player that played the breakable type of records.
- Kern
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DanGarion 4:02PM (6/16/2006)
I used to have a hybrid/mountain bike made by Panasonic.
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matt 4:18PM (6/16/2006)
i use hummer condoms and jiffy lube.
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Steve C. 4:19PM (6/16/2006)
What about this:
http://www.epicmarine.com/history.html
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John 4:21PM (6/16/2006)
Hummer condoms.........that's rich! lol
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Steve C. 4:24PM (6/16/2006)
See #8, and this (Toyota sweet potatoes???):
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/more_than_cars/bio_afforest/satsumaimo.html
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lavardera 4:27PM (6/16/2006)
Panasonic is in the home business as well - Panahomes.
http://www.panahome.jp/
Housing is a completely different game in Japan than here. We have space to waste and they do not. All the same if you look at the Japanese domestics and shake your head at GM, well I assure you the difference is worse in the housing industry. We build CRAP here. And people buy it. I'm sure all of you buy it. We are that stupid.
But how do you hit a whole country in the side of the head with a mackerel to wake them up? Well at least for people who like cars should be smarter. I have to ask: If you like contemporary automobiles, their technology, the machinery, the design, then how the hell can you like the crap they sell for houses in this country? Pseudo traditional, plastic sided crapola. Would any of you buy a car with phony wood grain on the side? Do you have vinyl siding with embossed grain? Hmmm. How about one of those nice phony vinyl convertible tops on your sedan, huh? But maybe you have wood shingle looking asphalt roofing on your house...
Hypocrites - you don't even deserve a decent car.
A ray of hope: www.fabprefab.com www.livemodern.com
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lavardera 4:30PM (6/16/2006)
live links for those
http://fabprefab.com/
http://members.livemodern.com/
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G. Snyder 4:34PM (6/16/2006)
"We build CRAP here. And people buy it. I'm sure all of you buy it. We are that stupid.
But how do you hit a whole country in the side of the head with a mackerel to wake them up? Well at least for people who like cars should be smarter. I have to ask: If you like contemporary automobiles, their technology, the machinery, the design, then how the hell can you like the crap they sell for houses in this country? Pseudo traditional, plastic sided crapola. Would any of you buy a car with phony wood grain on the side? Do you have vinyl siding with embossed grain? Hmmm. How about one of those nice phony vinyl convertible tops on your sedan, huh? But maybe you have wood shingle looking asphalt roofing on your house...
Hypocrites - you don't even deserve a decent car."
Dude...you should move away then. I am not sure we need you in this country if that is how you feel.
Who are you to make blanket statements and directing them at readers of this blog? I don't know you and you don't know me. That means you don't get to call me a hypocrite.
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I Want a Jeep 4:53PM (6/16/2006)
Don't forget about toyota's love for cow dung.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=motoringSummary&storyID=2006-06-16T115117Z_01_NOA642658_RTRUKOC_0_AUTOS-TOYOTA-COWS.xml
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MikeInNC 5:18PM (6/16/2006)
lavardera, your anawer is we all should buy a gussied up trailer? A polished turd if you ask me. My house is fully stick built, it has cedar shakes on it (real cedar), real wood triple pane windows, solid antique heart pine floors (1.25 inches thick), a real wood wrap around front porch...etc. You want me to give that up for a stackable trailer? I know it's not quite that simple and they have come a long way but, with that said, next time there's a tornado, you can hang out in my garage.
Getting back to the subect at hand, I'd like to see one in person and get the impressions of someone who isn't a zealot before I would toss a qtr mil at one of these. I would like to see more solar and wind generated options for standard housing in the US. There is a lot we could do that we are not doing en-masse yet.
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dave 5:38PM (6/16/2006)
I used to play in a band with a guy who had a Hyundai acoutic guitar ...
On the prefab side, IKEA is involved in something like this, too--kind of like a flat-packed Levittown: http://www.boklok.com
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matt 5:49PM (6/16/2006)
IKEA is building these too? Great, time to break out the allen key.
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sam 9:59AM (8/27/2006)
prefabs are nothing more than upscale trailer trash dwellings. i'll take my stick by stick hand built no illegal mexican worker allowed american products only home over one of those garbage can homes any day. mine is built by americans, financed by americans, maintained by americans, (no illigals allowed to cut my grass or clean my pool) lived in by americans who only buy american built cars. and guess what! five years in the home and no quality issues and no problems or recalls with my three gm cars and one ford. it's a good life surrounded by TRUE AMERICAN QUALITY.
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John 9:25PM (6/16/2006)
I love the Mitsubishi Uni-ball Signo pens. Try them today! They write really well.
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