1980 Toyota Fj40 Land Cruiser on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Toyota will invest $210 million to expand West Virginia engine production

WASHINGTON — Toyota is investing $210 million to expand engine production in West Virginia and add 100 new jobs. The Japanese automaker said it would boost capacity by 70,000 engines a year at the Buffalo, West Virginia plant, up from the nearly 1 million transmissions and engines it produces annually for vehicles assembled in North America. The investment will increase assembly capacity of its four-cylinder engine line. The plant makes four- and six-cylinder engines for Avalon, Camry, Corolla, Highlander, Lexus ES, Lexus RX350, RAV4 and Sienna. The investment comes as automakers around the world are shifting more focus to electric vehicles and away from vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. Toyota says hybrid vehicles, which includes internal combustion engines, will be a key part of its vehicle strategy in the coming decade as other automakers focus more heavily on battery electric vehicles, which only run on electric power. Toyota said last week that 16% of its U.S. sales were hybrid vehicles in 2020, a figure that will jump to at least 20% in 2021. Related Video:

Toyota GT86 engineers explored shooting brake and sedan variants, are they still in the cards?

According to the Toyota UK blog, engineers for the automaker were so excited developing the GT86 coupe that they investigated producing a whole family of models based on the rear-wheel drive sports car. And at least one engineer - product chief Tetsuya Tada - still hopes it can happen, even if not everyone at Toyota is onboard. Tada: "Actually we tried to do this secretly but the executives found us out. They said: 'What are you doing? Will you please focus on the coupe.'"
Those mooted variants included both a four-door sedan and a shooting brake. Why? Aside from the pure excellence of a lightweight, brilliantly handling hatchback, Toyota was keenly aware of the fact that it may need to spread the cost of development out across several models. Tada says that's part of the reason why it was so easy to create the convertible. The company knew from the outset that a softtop version was in the cards, and built the machine's structure to accommodate having the roof sliced off.
Tada also made mention of the already-announced collaboration between Toyota and BMW. The engineer said that the GT86 was particularly helpful because it demonstrated just how successful a product conceived and designed by two different companies can be. While he didn't say exactly what Toyota and BMW are up to, it's clear the two are looking into a number of possibilities. It's an interesting read with a lot of

Camaro ZL1, Toyota 86, and More | Autoblog Minute

We recap the week in automotive news, including a look at the 2017 Camaro ZL1, Toyota 86, and automatic emergency braking. Scion Toyota Autoblog Minute Videos Original Video toyota 86