Xle Suv 3.5l Awd Power Steering 4-wheel Disc Brakes Aluminum Wheels Rear Spoiler on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Toyota temporarily idles pair of Indian plants due to labor unrest

The Detroit News reported today that Toyota will restart production at two Indian plants, following a shutdown on Monday.
Factory labor, management and police in Asia engage in the kind of violent altercations that we're not used to, having almost entirely walked away from the overtly brutal relations epitomized by the Pinkerton Detective Agency and the Flint Sit-Down Strike. In India, a plant owned by a Ford transmission supplier plant was shut down in 2009 after incidents between workers and armed men around the same time as Ssangyong workers occupied a factory in South Korea, in 2012 Suzuki Maruti workers rioted over wages around the same time upset employees beat a ceramics factory president to death in retaliation for a labor leader's killing.
Toyota is the latest to company trying to avoid that road. The Detroit Free Press reported earlier this week that it shut down two plants in India after 11 months of acrimonious wage negotiations and arbitration have gone nowhere. Toyota said the plant workers in Bidadi, near Bangalore, had deliberately stopped production at times over the past 45 days and threatened management. The workers said they wanted their wages raised by an amount already agreed to by management, but that management had reneged; news reports weren't clear on the amount, some saying nearly 10,000 rupees ($165 US) more per month, another saying 4,000 rupees ($65 US), but reports agree that Toyota has said it will only go as high as 3,050 rupees ($50 US).

Toyota GT86 gets TRD treatment in UK

As dearly as we love the Toyota GT86 / Scion FR-S / Subaru BRZ franchise, we readily admit we wouldn't look sideways at a model with a bit more firepower. And while that's not quite on the table yet, Toyota has been busy amping up the visual firepower of its rear-drive coupe with a whole host of TRD parts. To this point, that's been a largely à la carte affair, but the automaker's UK outpost has just announced a special-edition model that allows our British friends to pick up the whole shooting match all in one go.
The Toyota GT86 TRD will only be available in black and white, and just 250 examples are to be built. As you can see from the excellent gallery above, the catalog of look-faster bits include a more aggressive front air dam, side skirts, rear bumper fascia, spoiler and unique 18-inch forged alloys. Additional flourishes include a TRD shift lever and branded radiator cap. The sole concession to actual performance? A "fast-response quad exhaust" that might only improve things audibly - 0-62 mph is apparently unchanged at 7.7 seconds, and the top end is still 140 mph for the manual transmission model. (The auto gets by with 8.4 seconds and 130 mph).
Pricing? Glad you asked. £31,495 for GT 86 TRD manual, £32,995 for the automatic - that's nearly $50,000 US for the tripedalist and just over for the automatic. (Those are heady prices, but bear in mind that UK MSRPs and taxes are generally significantly higher than their US counterparts). If the standard GT86 is more your speed, it still rings up at a more affordable £24,995 - roughly $39,500 - leaving plenty of budget for actual performance parts. No word yet on North American availability of a special TRD model, but we've got a call in...

2014 Toyota Corolla details leaked

Toyota will launch the 2014 Corolla later this year, and thanks to the ever-leaky internet, a couple of key details about the new sedan have been revealed. Car and Driver was able to uncover these bits of information thanks to someone at a Toyota dealer in Kansas who has seen the car, as well as its order guide, though the dealer's site has since removed its original posting.
We got our first glimpse at the next-generation Corolla's design at the 2013 Detroit Auto Show, where Toyota unveiled the Furia concept, pictured above. Yes, it looks all sporty and aggressive, but fear not, appliance shoppers, C/D says that the production car should have a couple of Furia bits mixed in with a huge helping of Camry-inspired styling.
The 2014 Corolla will reportedly continue to use a 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine, though the mill has been massaged a bit, adding Toyota's Valvematic continuously variable valve timing. A four-speed automatic (yep!) will be offered in the base model, though the manual transmission now has six gears, and higher trim levels can be had with a CVT. Both engine output and fuel economy numbers should improve slightly over the 2013 model. Currently, the Corolla produces 132 horsepower and 128 pound-feet of torque, and achieves 27/34 miles per gallon (city/highway) with the five-speed manual 'box.