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Toyota investing $200M in Southern manufacturing

Over the past two years, Toyota has invested more than $2 billion at its North American production facilities, and it apparently doesn't plan on stopping there. To keep up with recent strong sales, Toyota is investing an additional $200 million at its engine plants in the Southern US to increase production capacity of its V6 engines.
The bulk of this money ($150 million) will go to expand Toyota's engine plant in Huntsville, AL, which is currently responsible for supplying engines - four-cylinder, V6 and V8 - to eight of Toyota's 12 domestically produced vehicles. That includes the best-selling Toyota Camry (shown above).
Toyota didn't say exactly what improvements are being made to the plant, but this follows last year's $80 million investment in the plant that is set to be completed by next year raising the engine capacity to 750,000 annual units including 362,000 V6s. The remaining $50 million will go to the casting plants of Toyota-owned Bodine Aluminum in Missouri and Tennessee, which supply engine blocks and cylinder heads to the Huntsville engine plant as well as others in Kentucky and West Virginia. Scroll down below for the official press release.

Anything but boring | 2018 Lexus LC 500 First Drive

This is it, the headliner, the main event. After years of Lexus promising to make less-boring cars and instead giving us countless spindle-grille facelifts, the 2018 LC 500 is here as the brand's new North Star. It's the official halo to mark where Toyota's luxury brand is headed. This is the car that we hope can bring an end to the relentless mentions of boring cars - which are themselves needlessly boring. And besides, "not boring" is a terrible metric for evaluation. What Lexus is really trying to do is give its cars some spirit, to transcend the paint-by-numbers stereotype that made this brand the luxury juggernaut it is today. By that yardstick, the LC 500 is a success simply based on how it looks. It's beautiful in a way that we couldn't predict from the 2012 LF-LC concept that foreshadowed it. The kind of beauty where instead of reflexively grabbing your phone to take a picture, you just stand there and keep looking. And pictures don't do this car justice, anyway. They soften the edges and reduce the massive draw of the wide shoulders. In person, looking straight at the LC, the car looks like it's 80 percent hood. In the rest of the lineup, the trademark Lexus grille's execution ranges from caricature (RC) to botched nose job (LX). Here it pulls everything together. From every other angle, the LC has some feature that seems excessive – in the best way possible. The proportions of the LC give off a distinctively functional vibe, and it's genuine. That hood is so long because the 5.0-liter V8's center of mass sits three and a half inches behind the front axle. The extra space up front is mostly empty - Lexus uses high-strength steel cross-braces to shore up torsional rigidity instead of adding structure ahead of the front wheels, and the battery sits under the trunk floor. For all the visual excitement, the LC is still a conventional vehicle. Aside from some advancements in the LC 500h's hybrid powertain, the innovation here is of the iterative type. It's interesting, in that Lexus is betting on emotional appeal and driving character at a time when the future relevance of both is up for debate. If anything, the LC is a car for the current automotive world, not the one to come. And despite extensive use of aluminum and sheet-molded carbon, the LC 500 weighs in at a hefty 4,280 pounds. That's right in line with the BMW 6 Series and a good deal below the Batali-esque Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupe's 4,700 pounds.

Did Lexus make a BMW? Or did BMW make a Lexus? This and other 2017 surprises

It's that time of year again. The calendar is about to reach its end, Star Trek Cats 2018 is about to take its place, and I'm reflecting about all the cars that graced my driveway this year or summoned me to exotic places. You know, like Stuttgart or Phoenix. In 2017, I drove at least 57, and as I perused the list of them, I started to notice a common refrain: "This car surprised me." Most were pleasant surprises, but there were a few head scratchers and facepalms for good measure. In both cases, it was generally the result of car companies seemingly trying to break out of an existing mold. Nowhere was that more apparent than the pair of Lexuses slathered in Infrared paint: The LS 500 that left me this week and the LC 500 that was my favorite car of 2017. Though Lexus has been trying to shake its crusty, gold-packaged reputation for some time now, its efforts always seemed like an old man choosing Hollister to redo his wardrobe after realizing it hasn't been updated since 1987. I fell in love with the LC, genuinely floored by its near-perfect take on the GT. It's characterful in sound, appearance and tactility. It was at home in the city, in the mountain and on the open road. It was both comfortable and thrilling, and after driving the mechanically related LS 500, I can report that the LC's talents aren't an outlier. The LS 500's turbo V6 may make different noises than the LC's naturally aspirated V8, but it nevertheless invigorates the cabin when the car is placed in Sport+ mode. The steering is truly communicative, body motions are kept in miraculous check, and I absolutely forgot I was in an enormous luxury limo ... and a Lexus one at that. It was everything that the BMW 530e was not. I drove that on the exact same roads and was utterly bored the entire time. Generally doughy, lifeless steering, more distant than Planet 9. And no, the plug-in hybrid powertrain had nothing to do with that. At least it shouldn't. The Porsche Panamera S e-Hybrid I also drove this year proves that, as do the Hyundai Ioniqs, which are surprisingly adept and fun little cars regardless of what powers their wheels (Hyundai + hybrid = fun really blew me away). I would drive that Lexus LS F Sport over the BMW 5 Series any day of the week, which seems like a shocking thing to say in relation to either car. While Lexus is seemingly breaking out of its old crusty mold, BMW seems to be climbing into one.