Toyota Buying Into Nascar!!!!!!

[AfterShock]

Well, there you go.
Thanx for the update Flame.
I'll make a note of it.
I stand corrected.

I REALLY gotta start buying new programs. 

[Tyyrus]

Flammer , Thanks Dude...I really like the Nav-Star by International that my F-250 had as an Option , rather than the conventional Ford Diesel that was being Produced at the time..it sucked ! Just the same as the Dodge Cummins Diesel..quite a few people don't realize that they offer both an D & E Series Diesel the latter is Commercial or an Industrial more Robust Power Plant if you can Imagine that. Larger Oil PUmp  , Water Pump , Radiator and Thermostat , Stainless Steel Injectors vs Carbon Steel , Heavy Duty Glow PLugs..Etc !

Shockey , No problem dude..happins to me all the time ..things keep a changing so quickly... Still gonna take that new Jeep Liberty out for a test drive with the Mercede's 4 cyl. Diesel 30+ MPG...gotta check out the low end grunt..Eh !

[flamehothead]

No Problem Tyyrus. I probably shouldn't have stuck my nose in your conversation. And Shockey......I didn't mean for my post to sound like I was being a jerk or a know it all. If it offened you, Then I Apologize.

[AfterShock]

No problemo amigo.
I appreciate the correction.
Keep up the good work Flame.

[smyler]

In a related story, Jack said the following stuff at a news conference: http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/news?slug=ap-nascar-ragingroush&prov=ap&type=lgns

[IndyCarzGo]

Have you seen the Tundra commercials lately?

Engines with over 400 pounds feet of torque, a SIX speed automatic transmission, bigger brakes, larger rear end ring gear, huge trailer hitches, ...............

Looks like Toyota has plans of taking over the pick-up truck market too.
It'll be hard to ignore equipment like that.
Is Toyota building a better mouse trap?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
Watch for an announcement that the Brian is selling NA$CAR to the Land Of The Rising Sun, as a turn-key opperation.

Mark my words.

WARNING:Soapbox time for yours truly, so if ya are bugged or easily offended...skip this post!!!

I agree fully with ya there, Shockey!!!


I think what these folks forget is this is strictly business...the way France Jr. and his ilk have made it.... No longer is it a sport. Is it any different than Major League Baseball or the NFL where teams are bought and sold for obscene amounts of money?? Or where a team can hold up a city for ransom of a new facility and complete revenue control by simply threatening to relocate??

 I hate to tell you folks but this is the 21st Century... not the mid 20th!! There is so such thing as a pure sport any more... just as in industry and everything else that prevades the society we inhabit, the bottom line is CASH!!!! How much PROFIT there is to be made!!  How else can you explain paying an absoulte disruptive fool like Terrel Owens  5.5 MILLION a year for 5  years??? And he's not the only one!!!!

I have heard and read many of the old timers from the glory days of NASCAR bemoan this for years...this is nothing new! Why shouldn't Toyota utilize the same system that got GM, Ford and Chrysler  to their place in the sun back in the day?? Was it any different when it was the big 3 musceling out upstarts such as Hudson and others??

Or could it be there is still a spot of  racial animosity within the  "good ole boys" towards our friends from the land of the rising sun? And , Good Gawd, what will happen if Earnheart Jr. actually DOES jump and drive a Toyota??? Good Gawd...Its the end of the World as  we know it!!!

[IndyCarzGo]

I will admit there Truck's are pretty nice but I'm 100% AMERICAN MADE BABY.

My  firend, I think you are in deep....  when ya go to buy  yor next vehicle!!!

Take  a good look at the MFG. content labels on all the new "American" cars and see where the parts content actually comes form.... you'd be amazed!! Haveing owned 3 forigen (Spell That Japanese...Nissan) automobiles, I will say that when i choose my next car i do not care where it comes from ...as long as it gives me what my two Infiniti G-20s gave me previously...trouble free driving...great gas milage and tons of comfort!!! THAT is what I am buying.... And funny thing? Those Toyota pickups, especially the full size Tundras, ARE made here in the US of A...with UAW labor and American parts content!!!  As are Mercedes vehicles...BMWs... and many others...ITS just cheaper to make em here!!!  Go figure!!!

[flamehothead]

I just read the story that smyler just put up and like Jarrett said " We could Argue this FOREVER". What he was refering to is where the Fusion and the Monte Carlo is built. The Fusion is built in Mexico and the Monte Carlo is made in Canada. No offense Tyyrus. GO CANADA. All I am saying is that when I walk into a Chevrolet or Ford dealership I know that the car I buy is going to have some american made parts on it. AND I know that it will also have some foreign parts on it, I understand that. But if I buy the Vehicle with SOME American Made Parts on it then I know that I am helping those who work for that company KEEP their JOB and keep it here in the US of A. That's all I am trying to say. When I was 17 I used to work for a Pontiac/Toyota Dealership and I seen so many Toyota's come in with Half a Million Miles on them and I have to say that I was simply AMAZED but that doesn't make me want to go and buy one. I guess my WHOLE point is this. As long as I can buy an American car with some American parts on it then that is what I am going to buy. I have never had trouble finding an American car that has Ton's of Comfort, Great Gas Mileage, And Trouble Free Driving. So I figure, Why not buy the one that has at LEAST SOME American made part's on it. Oh, And I'm not in DEEP. I just want to keep at least A FEW job's here in the GREAT US OF A. Is there anything wrong with that. And like Jarrett said, We could go back and forth about this all day long and we will not get anywhere. You have your choices and I have mine. I can't change yours and you can't change mine.

[IndyCarzGo]

I just read the story that smyler just put up and like Jarrett said " We could Argue this FOREVER". What he was refering to is where the Fusion and the Monte Carlo is built. The Fusion is built in Mexico and the Monte Carlo is made in Canada. No offense Tyyrus. GO CANADA. All I am saying is that when I walk into a Chevrolet or Ford dealership I know that the car I buy is going to have some american made parts on it. AND I know that it will also have some foreign parts on it, I understand that. But if I buy the Vehicle with SOME American Made Parts on it then I know that I am helping those who work for that company KEEP their JOB and keep it here in the US of A. That's all I am trying to say. When I was 17 I used to work for a Pontiac/Toyota Dealership and I seen so many Toyota's come in with Half a Million Miles on them and I have to say that I was simply AMAZED but that doesn't make me want to go and buy one. I guess my WHOLE point is this. As long as I can buy an American car with some American parts on it then that is what I am going to buy. I have never had trouble finding an American car that has Ton's of Comfort, Great Gas Mileage, And Trouble Free Driving. So I figure, Why not buy the one that has at LEAST SOME American made part's on it. Oh, And I'm not in DEEP. I just want to keep at least A FEW job's here in the GREAT US OF A. Is there anything wrong with that. And like Jarrett said, We could go back and forth about this all day long and we will not get anywhere. You have your choices and I have mine. I can't change yours and you can't change mine.

I really wasn't tryin to change your mind... just point out a reality of life.... and it's not just automobniles either! Any hi tech industry had been or is curently being globalized in order to maximize corporate profit potential....

Most of the Toyotas and Nissans (and most others too) have extremely high native partts contens made here in the US of A... And they are also assembled and built here too!! Thats the only way they can avoid the killing taxes placed on 100% imported cars by the Feds..(cars like Rolls, Porsches and Ferrarris and their Ilk...100% made overseas).and they also create many jobs in this country too!

I sometimes do not think most Americans are aware of how globalization of industries like atuomobiles has changed the perception of what is and what is not an "American" vehicle!!


This recently appeared in the NY Times Business ection and might be interesting:

Automakers from overseas first began building manufacturing plants in this country in the 1970's, largely as a defensive response to protectionist threats. But even as General Motors and Ford have been announcing thousands of job cuts, the foreign automakers are aggressively building new factories and expanding plants they opened not long ago.

In Alabama alone, Mercedes-Benz has doubled the size of its plant outside Tuscaloosa in the last year, while Honda has done the same at its factory in Lincoln. A new plant from the Korean automaker, Hyundai, opened just last month in Montgomery. And Toyota is adding 300 more workers here at its two-year-old plant in Huntsville to produce powerful engines for the big pickup trucks that will be made in a factory opening next year in Texas.

In other industries, American manufacturers have been some of the most avid investors abroad. But in the case of the auto industry, the competition has been brought right to Detroit's doorstep as the strongest foreign companies are moving to states eager for their investments, most of them in the Deep South, and hiring workers seeking the stability that home-grown companies can no longer offer.

As a result, a quarter of all cars and trucks built in the United States are now made in factories owned by foreign automakers producing foreign brands, up from 18 percent in 2000. The assembly plants alone employ nearly 60,000 people, and that number continues to grow.

The employment at the American companies still dwarfs that of the newcomers. Automakers in Detroit employ four times the hourly workers - 250,000 - but that number is continuing to fall. Already, G.M. has announced that it plans to cut 25,000 of those workers by 2008.

Union jobs at the Big Three plants pay a dollar or two more an hour - about $26 an hour compared with $24 or $25 an hour for the nonunion jobs at the foreign plants. But compensation at the American automakers swells to an average of $55 an hour when health care, cost of living and other benefits are counted, compared with $48 an hour, on average, at Toyota.

Toyota gets more out of its workers. Its plants operate at about 107 percent of the manufacturing capacity, meaning that they are constantly running on overtime, according to Harbour & Associates, a consulting firm that tracks manufacturing. By contrast, G.M.'s plants are operating at only 75 percent of their capacity, Harbour found.

For David Herring, who grew up in Pontiac, Mich., outside of Detroit, his new job at Toyota's engine plant in Huntsville is a return to the industry that employed his uncle and other family members, but that he had originally decided to avoid. He earned a football scholarship to the University of North Alabama and then became a social worker. The job wore him down, he said, and he saw opportunity and stability at Toyota.

"Basically, auto country is moving down south," said Mr. Herring, 29, who met Toyota's president on his first day on the job. He added, "Fate brought me here."

For the most part, the first wave of foreign-owned plants were farther north, in places like Ohio and Kentucky, while the newest factories are concentrated in the Deep South.

The state of Alabama has been particularly generous in wooing auto companies. In 1993, it provided $258 million in incentives and tax breaks to land its first foreign automaker, Mercedes. The state has spent hundreds of millions since to attract the Honda, Hyundai and Toyota plants.


Toyota's impact on the nation's economy has been powerful. A study by the Center for Automotive Research, which has yet to be published, estimates that Toyota's investments in the United States had led to 386,600 American jobs as of last year - including jobs at suppliers and in surrounding communities.

That includes the 29,000 assembly workers at Toyota's plants, plus another 74,000 people employed by the automaker in its California headquarters, design and engineering centers and at its dealerships. And those figures do not include Toyota's expansion plans. In Texas alone, the study estimates, Toyota will help create another 9,000 jobs.

The impact helps explain why "states are falling all over themselves to land a car company," said James T. Bolte, a Toyota vice president in charge of the Alabama plant.

In a state where the average wage is $31,000 a year, according to the Commerce Department, Toyota's workers earn $45,000 on average, with overtime, plus a benefits package valued by the company at $10,000. Workers receive medical, dental and life insurance coverage; a traditional pension plan and a 401(k) plan; an allowance for child care; and an annual cash bonus, which was $3,850 a worker last year.

Prospective employees are lining up to apply for jobs at the new factories. About 30,000 people vied for the 2,000 additional jobs at the gleaming white Mercedes plant west of Birmingham, where its workers dress in royal blue shirts that bear the company's three-pointed star logo on the right shoulder and their names on the left.

For Tammy Young, 36, the sprawling Mercedes factory was a prize after being laid off at U.S. Steel's big Birmingham operation, where she worked for nine years. In between, she held a temporary job at the Honda plant and worked at a dairy store.

The factory has just begun building the new R-class, a luxury station wagon, which will sell for about $50,000. It joins a new version of the M-class sport utility, the original vehicle produced here, whose sales are up 66 percent since it was updated last spring.

Toyota, which opened its plant with 150 workers in 2003, had 9,000 applications for those positions, even though jobs in an engine plant lack the allure and glamour of building cars at places like Mercedes.

The process of getting a job at Toyota is rigorous, meant to weed out those not meant for the repetitive, sometimes hot work inside the plant, which sits on 200 acres surrounded by cotton fields.

After interviews, job seekers had to complete five weeks of pre-employment training at a center, which is run and paid for by the state, across the road from Alabama A&M University. The drill included exercises to see if they could work on teams and hours spent on a practice assembly line. None of the applicants were paid. Anyone who was late or missed a training session was instantly cut.

The few successful applicants went through nine weeks more training inside the engine plant, including two hours a day in a fully equipped gym where they ran on treadmills and lifted weights to build endurance.

Unlike plants run by Detroit automakers, where a worker can spend 30 years screwing on the same parts, everyone on the Toyota line is taught to do every type of assembly job, so they can switch positions when needed to keep production flowing.

"It was hard," Mr. Herring said, "but it all had a purpose."

To many, the purpose is the stability of a job at Toyota, which earned $4.8 billion in 2004, as the Detroit companies struggled. Jewal Fossett II, 31, was encouraged to apply by his father, who had bounced from one Ford job to another.

The younger Mr. Fossett, who previously worked for MCI, said he had one reason for applying: "I have my own family to raise."

Noralyn Lassiter, 22, said she gave up her job as a customer service representative at DirecTV, where she spent days at a desk "on a headset." Now, she will stand for hours a day at a workstation, redolent with the faintly acrid smell of engine coolant. But, she said, "It's hard to find a job that you can stick with a long time."

Lately, at least some Toyota officials in Japan have expressed concern that the automaker's rapid growth could cause political problems, with one senior executive proposing that the company might raise prices or temper its expansion to give G.M. and Ford a break.

But, Mr. Bolte, the Toyota executive, is doubtful that the company is planning to retreat. "I haven't heard anybody say, 'Slow down,' " he said

It isn't anything we as a people are doing wrong...its the globalization of marketsplaces and production that forces us to change how we precieve the reality of what we are faced with.

[Tyyrus]

Hell that's all part of the Global Free-Trade Pact our North American Governments agreed upon...the Ford Trucks that were being built in Oakville Ont. are now being built in Mexico , the Chevrolet Monte-Carlo's that were built in Flint Michigan are now built in Missasauga Ontairo. Toyota Cars are being built in Kentucky and Trucks are being built in London Ontairo also..... so go figure..I Don't think the Japenese will loose out in the long run..though..Smyler..your right on ..there !

Hey , Flammer..No appology necessary..it's called National Pride and Protectionizium..perfectly normal. I'am rather unique as I have said before , have family on both sides of the Border , am a Naturalized citisen on either side of the Border ! I being a Baby Boomer , remember the Days of Hatred rendered to any Person of Decent of the Land of The Rising Sun !
Heck I had more Disrespect for people of German Ancestry (The Master Race) I guess they got a Rude awaking..Eh ! So nothing makes me hotter under the collar than to have North American's refer to each other as Forigners ! As for Smylers opinion of the current state of Nascar...yep it's a changing...just like Baseball has and Basketball and Football and Hockey..Hell .. better not let anyone watch.. participate or Own a NHL Team outside of Canada..Eh !  Hogwash....all Sports including Nascar are already Global . As Indy has indicated everyone has there opiniion and freedom of Choice and Selection..that doe's not make them Anti-American ! It just means they have a social , cultural or economic position in Life that affects their decision. Sure I buy North American whenever possible , and yes I would feel differently about Honda , Toyota , Susuki , if in fact I had family who was effected by the current cut backs within The Big Three ! But as I have said before this is Entertainment so , I have tried to stay out of the Political aspects of this discussion. I cannot stress enough that a LITTLE competition always produces a better product for all affected. But unfar trading practices are sometihing else..which I do not believe is the case as far as Nascar and Toyota. I do not see or feel they are being unfairly substitized in any manner ! Anyhow like I said previously within the attached former posting , look at your elected officials , and then in the mirror if you don't like the ramifications of Global Free Trade..Eh ! 

Heck I watched the Big V-8 Championships held in Austrialia last night , Ford Mustange vs Europeon Super Car's..kinda like the North American Lemans GT Series...not too shabby , but not Nascar..Eh !  

[flamehothead]

Well I can assure you that the last thing I wanted to do was bring polotics into this. All I said was that I buy American Made Products or better yet, I buy products with American parts in them. That's my prefrence and my RIGHT. I couldn't tell ya ANYTHING about politics and I sure as hell don't want to learn. Hell I'm enjoying the 1992 Bud 500 from Bristol on ESPN.

[Tyyrus]

Well I can assure you that the last thing I wanted to do was bring polotics into this. All I said was that I buy American Made Products or better yet, I buy products with American parts in them. That's my prefrence and my RIGHT. I couldn't tell ya ANYTHING about politics and I sure as hell don't want to learn. Hell I'm enjoying the 1992 Bud 500 from Bristol on ESPN.

Hell you're learnin..right now..Bro !  Very Politically Correct Position..Mate !