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Toyota Plans
Major Capacity Gains

Toyota Motor Corp. completed its latest expansion of engine manufacturing facilities in Buffalo, W. Va., in May to accommodate manufacturing of automatic transmissions. The Toyota West Virginia project was originally announced in May 1996. Ground was broken on the 4-cylinder engine plant in September 1996. In January 1998, Toyota announced the plant's first expansion, for production of V6 engines.

A second expansion, Toyota 's first automatic transmission plant outside Japan, was announced in September 1998. Toyota West Virginia has been making engines at the Buffalo facility since late 1998. (See the Site Selection cover story, "Toyota Turbocharges Its I-64 Cluster," January 2000 issue.) Currently, the plant employs nearly 650 people and produces about 800 4-cylinder and 400 V6 engines per day. The number of employees will climb to approximately 800 during 2001, when the automatic transmission plant begins production.

The 4-cylinder engines are produced for California-built Toyota Corollas and the V6 engines are produced for the Kentucky-built Toyota Avalon. The Buffalo plant will have the annual capacity to produce 300,000 4-cylinder engines for California-produced Corollas and Prizms, 200,000 V6 engines for Kentucky-produced Avalons and Siennas, and 360,000 automatic transmissions per year for North American-produced Camrys. The planned investment at the Buffalo site is $900 million.