Toyota Motor Corp. said it would invest $126 million in three
new facilities in Michigan that is part of its effort to
consolidate formerly separate operations.
The effort is being led by Jim Lentz, the chief executive
officer of Toyota North America, the highest ranking non-Japanese
member of the company's team. After his appointment two years ago,
Mr. Lentz pushed to consolidate operations. He announced last year
a plan to move the company's U.S. headquarters to Plano, Texas from
Torrance, Calif.
As part of the move, Toyota also relocated purchasing and some
engineering functions to Michigan, where Toyota employs about 1,500
people near Ann Arbor, Mich. The new facilities will house 300
people moving from Erlanger, Ky. and Torrance.
"Detroit still is the epicenter of the automotive world," said
Mr. Lentz, who spoke to reporters before a groundbreaking
ceremony.
Mr. Lentz is among the first 50 employees to move from
California to Texas. He said that by year end there would be about
350 people in Texas. Construction has begun on the new headquarters
there. Texas gave Toyota $40 million in incentives to relocate to
the state.
Mr. Lentz said he feels as though Toyota has fully recovered
from the series of events in 2009 through 2011 that conspired to
hurt the company in North America, including a recall crisis
connected to unintended acceleration, as well as the earthquake and
tsunami in Japan in 2011 that limited production.
Still, the company's U.S. market share—at 14.5%
today—hasn't returned to its peak level of 17% from
2009."There were a lot of tailwinds we had that led to 17%," he
said, referencing the bankruptcies of Chrysler LLC. and General
Motors Co. "I am not sure we were as good as 17% then. But I think
we can do a little better than 14.5%."
Mr. Lentz said he didn't know whether Sergio Marchionne, chief
executive officer of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, had reached out
to Toyota about a merger as he has with GM. Mr. Marchionne has is
seeking to merge with another car maker to improve scale and share
development costs.
"It's something we would not be interested in," Mr. Lentz said.
"We have scale."
Write to Mike Ramsey at michael.ramsey@wsj.com
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