Toyota fills unused capacity at Texas plant

Toyota Motor Corp, the world’s largest auto maker, added 1,000 workers to build Tacoma pickups at its San Antonio truck plant, and is using the factory’s full capacity for the first time after a rocky start.

The company yesterday marked the start of compact Tacoma production in the plant built to make only larger Tundra pickups when it opened in late 2006. Lower demand for Tundras than Toyota expected and the closing of its former California joint venture plant this year led it to move Tacoma output to Texas at a cost of $100 million.

“No one forecast the overall collapse of the US market in 2008, and certainly we didn’t anticipate full-size trucks would fall as much as they did,” Jim Lentz, Toyota’s US sales chief, told reporters yesterday.

The company’s current 270,000-unit North American pickup run rate, including 50,000 Tacomas built in Mexico, “looks about right,” he said.

Toyota planned to sell at least 200,000 Tundras a year when it began building the truck in 2006 in both Texas and Indiana. Sales missed that target in the model’s first full year, and the US volume shrank in subsequent years as fuel prices rose to a record in 2008 and later as the recession curbed demand.