Toyota’s New Texas Truck Factory: A New Plant for a New Truck

We’re pretty sure that most of you know by now that Toyota has built a new factory just outside San Antonio in which to assemble the Tundra half-ton pickup.
But what you may not know is just how interesting this factory is. So check this out:
This new plant is built on the 2,000-acre site of the former Walsh-Small Ranch, said to be the oldest cattle ranch in Texas, one that was active even before Texas statehood in 1845.
The new plant, called Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Texas, Inc., or TMMTX, was built to create up to 150,000 new Tundras each year with its crew of 2,000 team members. It augments an existing plant in Indiana, in operation since 1999, which also assembles Tundras.
San Antonio was chosen because the area around the city has plenty of flat, open ground, and because it also has a confluence of transportation facilities – both rail and highway. We need to be able to transport in raw materials, as well as transport out the finished Tundras.
But why Texas in the first place? That’s an easy one. Texas was chosen because it’s the capital of pickup sales in the United States – in fact, roughly one of every seven pickups sold in the U.S. is sold in Texas.
And also because San Antonio, the eighth largest city in the U.S., was seen as a repository of qualified workers. Indeed, http://www.fivestartoyota.com/ received more than 100,000 applications for the plant’s 2,000 jobs.
Toyota acquired the property in 2003 and broke ground in October of that year, moving 6.5 million cubic yards of dirt, pouring 250,000 yards of concrete (enough to pave a two-lane highway 53 miles long), erecting 15,000 tons of steel and installing 10 acres of siding.
At a total cost of $1.28 billion, the result is 2.2 million square feet, or 46 acres, of main factory built to create the Tundra at a rate of about 750 per day, starting from coils of steel rolling into one end of the building and ending with gleaming trucks rolling out the other.
In the stamping, welding and painting areas of the plant, about 400 robots do about 90 percent of the work, with the rest done by humans.
Humans also do most of the vehicle assembly – today’s robots are smart, but not smart enough to be certain that parts and components fit together properly.
Using this creative combination of brain power, muscle and machine, it takes about 24 hours to complete a truck – that’s going from raw steel to finished, painted, rolling and running state-of-the-art pickup.
Each truck comes down the line as a bare chassis, after the frame has been manufactured and its suspension, tires and wheels attached, and has a manifest, a sheet of paper, hanging from it, that shows what type of parts the truck needs. It’s kind of a recipe for what the truck will be.
This requires a very sophisticated parts-delivery system to make sure the right parts get to the line to match the vehicles. So in a process called “sequential build,” the seat-building company, for instance, completes its seats in exactly the right order, and it delivers those seats in exactly that order. The finished seats are loaded onto the assembly line in the proper order and installed in the truck they were meant for.
Our 21 on-site suppliers who provide parts, components and accessories are on-site, and they work in exactly this same way. They work in an additional 1.8 million square feet constructed to house their operations and the additional 2,100 workers who will be employed by them.
Tundra engines are produced in a Toyota Motor Manufacturing plant in Huntsville, Alabama, and transmissions are produced by a supplier in North Carolina. All are shipped to the Texas and Indiana facilities and installed there.
While some parts from Japan are being used on the new Tundra, 75% percent of the truck’s content is domestic.
As proud as Toyota is of this new state-of-the-art facility, it’s equally proud of the fact that the plant is a model citizen in environmental terms.
For instance, because much of the environmental impact in an automobile manufacturing facility comes from the painting operation, the Texas plant uses a water-borne paint system, with a water-borne primer. Without a solvent-based paint, emissions are much lower than they otherwise would be.
Water is an important consideration in an arid region such as this area of Texas, where most of the water supply comes from the area’s aquifers. The plant is built to minimize water use by utilizing recycled water in its processes.
The San Antonio plant operates as what’s called a zero-landfill facility. What this means is that no waste is being taken to a landfill. Instead, the plant will recycle extensively. For instance, scrap steel will return to the steel mill, scrap plastic will be shredded and returned to plastic pellet manufacturer.
Even the pallets upon which parts are delivered are plastic, rather than wood. That’s because wood breaks up and wears out, then must be disposed of in a landfill. Plastic can be used again and again.
The result, then, is not only a factory to match the Tundra, but a factory to match the economic and environmental needs of Texas, and of San Antonio. It’s a great way to go about assembling a vehicle. Especially when it is headed to http://www.fivestartoyota.com/

Diabolical Diesel Dually Tundra: Part 'Mad Max,' Part Rolls Royce

Though I’ve written a lot about trucks, especially in the two years leading up to the launch of the all-new Tundra, I’ll readily admit that I’m not a truck guy. Now, they sure do come in handy when you’ve got a ton of stuff to move, or some oversized item that needs to get from here to there. But my day-to-day reality is blissfully truck-free and, in all likelihood, always will be.
The same cannot be said for Warren Victor, one of my colleagues here at Toyota Motor Sales. Warren works in the Truck and SUV Marketing Group. He doesn’t just think about trucks or, even, drive them. He actually dreams about them. And, sometimes, he gets to bring those dreams to life.
A massive case in point: the Tundra project truck he's rolling into Toyota’s booth at the Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association show in Las Vegas Oct. 30-Nov. 2. Warren directed the Toyota Motorsports Technical Group to take a stock Tundra and find a way to shoehorn into it an 8-liter, inline 6-cylinder engine made by Toyota affiliate Hino Motors. They succeeded, but it required radical alterations to pull it off. You see, this is the same engine that’s meant for a 35,000-pound commercial truck, generating enough torque so that, as Warren puts it, the Tundra could climb a wall if requested.
Among the exterior cues befitting this behemoth’s off-the-charts muscle are 22.5-inch wheels custom made by Alcoa, a diamond plate-lined bed and a charcoal gray metallic flat paint treatment. Inside, the truck features hand-sewn chestnut-squash-colored leather seats and suede pillars and headliner.Warren’s one line description: “It’s ‘Road Warrior’ on the outside and Lexus on the inside.”
Given www.fivestartoyota.com version of this one-off will never see the light of day, what’s the point? Warren says it’s all about a willingness to set aside convention and try new things—something a company the size of Toyota should do from time to time.
And along the way, who knows? It might even tempt a lifelong car guy like me to appreciate the beauty, and the beast, in trucks.

Doing the Alcan Highway on Hydrogen: A High-Tech Drive Through a Low-Tech Wilderness

Doing the Alcan Highway on Hydrogen: A High-Tech Drive Through a Low-Tech Wilderness
Toyota gets a lot of attention because of the vehicles we build and sell that are powered by a system we call Hybrid Synergy Drive. The best-known of these is of course the Prius. There are others, as well.
But the most familiar form of Hybrid Synergy Drive, which combines the virtues of an efficient gas engine with those of a battery pack and a powerful electric motor to deliver improved fuel economy and reduced exhaust emissions, is just one component of what we’re doing in our search for what we call sustainable mobility.
Among other things, as part of our Hybrid Synergy family of vehicles, we’re exploring hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. These rely on the reaction between oxygen and hydrogen, in a complex system called a fuel-cell stack that replaces the internal-combustion engine, to create electricity that is used to power the vehicle and all its systems. The only by-product is pure water. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But though hydrogen-vehicle technology is well advanced, the vehicles themselves are still a long way from consumer driveways, not least because of the lack of an infrastructure to manufacture, store and deliver the hydrogen needed to power them.

Indeed, roadside refueling of hydrogen vehicles at the gas-pressure levels that the vehicles need isn’t even legal in some places. But it is in Canada. That made Canada’s famed Alcan Highway a dandy place for us to demonstrate the capabilities of our experimental Highlander FCHV.
So we set up a trip down the Alcan, and we planned for 300 miles between fuel stops. We felt that this distance was a good one because it’s well within our FCHV’s range, and because it’s a typical and acceptable range for a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle. It seemed a good standard against which to measure the usability and practicality of the Highlander FCHV.
Additionally, this seemed a valuable opportunity to test the vehicle’s power system against some of the challenges associated with fuel-cell power trains. These include starting and operating in cold temperatures, and standing up to the vibration and harshness of rough roads over a long distance, and over a long time.
You know about the Alcan Highway, right? It comprises more than 1,500 miles of roadway that was carved through the Canadian wilderness, from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to a point about 300 miles short of Fairbanks, Alaska, through the rugged Yukon Territory, in 1942.

The road itself is mostly paved, but it’s rough, with frost heaves, potholes and worse. In addition to vehicular traffic, it’s also got moose, grizzly bears and other animals vying for the right-of-way. We’re always up for a challenge and a bit of adventure, so this trip sounded just right to our intrepid Torrance-based Advanced Technologies Group team.
Our plan was to travel the 2,300-mile distance from Fairbanks to Vancouver, British Columbia, covering much of the distance over the Alcan, in seven days – and to do it without practice runs or pre-trip evaluations. Call it Alcan-plus. If we made it to Vancouver, great. If not – well, we’d just chalk the whole experience up to research and development. Except for some trip-specific graphics and tubular guards for the grille, rockers and rear end, the Highlander FCHV was left in its standard prototype form.
We enlisted the aid of Linde AG, which provided a supply of hydrogen that was carried with us on a truck, and Powertech Labs, which supplied a self-contained refueling rig that came along on another truck. Both trucks traveled ahead of us and set up shop at predetermined intervals so we could refuel according to plan. And, just in case, a pair of Tundra pickups followed along behind as support vehicles.
As we made our way toward Vancouver, we covered the most remote sections of the Yukon Territory. We encountered very cold weather, very rough roads, and herds of elk, goats, caribou and buffalo. We crawled past those animals at very low speeds, and, on open stretches of road, sailed along at more than 90 m.p.h.
When we reached our destination seven days after setting out, we tallied up everything that had gone wrong with our vehicle and found that our list contained – well, absolutely nothing at all. Our Highlander FCHV performed without a glitch - just as we suspected it would.
So what did the trip prove? Well, for starters, it proved that our FCHV works really well. It underscored the viability of hydrogen as a fuel. And it proved to us that if, and when, hydrogen finally becomes widely available to consumers, Toyota will have the technology to make reliable, clean-running, affordable vehicles available. That’s part of our commitment to sustainable mobility. And it’s part of our commitment to our http://www.fivestartoyota.com/

More Than A Compact Truck?

I’m guessing that many of you Open Roadies have only seen the small bit of the A-BAT, a concept vehicle we debuted at the North American International Automobile Show in Detroit in January, and introduced to you in our first post about the vehicle, titled "Spotlight on Detroit: A-BAT Comes to Town," on January 15. We also showed the vehicle at the Chicago Auto Show, and now that the excitement has died down a bit, we thought we’d describe it in a bit more detail and seek your opinions about it.
The A-BAT – or Advanced-Breakthrough Aerodynamic Truck – is a highly flexible four-passenger compact truck that uses a unitized body, instead of the separate cab, cargo bed and steel ladder frame more usually seen in trucks of all sizes.
The A-BAT’s flexibility goes far beyond its unitized construction, however. First of all, it’s designed to be at home on dirt roads, city streets and Interstate highways. And more important, its motive power is provided by Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive. That’s right, it’s a hybrid, so it’s got the low emissions and high fuel economy we all want.
In fully enclosed form, the A-BAT’s cargo bed is just 4 feet long – enough space for a whole lot of camping or sports gear. But dropping a midgate at the rear of the passenger cabin and folding out a bed extender provides the capacity required to haul that familiar benchmark of pickup-truck capacity, the 4 x 8 sheet of plywood. And a translucent roof panel slides open to allow for tall, bulky cargo in the cargo bed.
The bed has additional features that are further aimed at expanding the A-BAT’s usefulness. These include tailgate lighting for illuminating the load in the bed, a first-aid kit and flashlight integrated into the tailgate, sliding tie-downs and an AC power outlet. Storage for sports and leisure equipment is provided in the lockable drawers in the bed walls, and additional storage is accessible through sliding doors conveniently placed in and outside of the truck bed. And if that isn’t enough, even more storage capacity is found in a large sliding drawer beneath the bed, accessible without opening the tailgate.
Taking the concept of environmental efficiency a bit beyond the use of Hybrid Synergy Drive, the A-BAT has translucent solar panels in the top surface of its instrument panel. These capture sunlight and convert it into energy that helps power the retractable, portable navigation unit, portable power pack and backlit information displays found in the A-BAT’s interior.
That interior’s alloy center console houses a portable power pack that provides both AC and DC electrical power for powering tools, electrical gear while camping, a laptop computer, small appliances or assisting a vehicle jump-start.
So at a time when our pickups have gotten larger, what we have here is nothing less than the reinvention of the compact pickup. It’s cool looking, practical, useful, fun to drive and, best of all, it’s a hybrid.
The question that most frequently arises, of course, is this one: Is the A-BAT slated for production? Well, Toyota never comments on advance product. And that brings me to the most important part of this post. Using the comment area you’ll find below this post, tell us what you think of the A-BAT. Should we build it, or not? And if we do build it, what features should we keep, what features should we add, and what should we do differently?
We’re really interested in knowing what http://www.fivestartoyota.com/ thinks.

A Win and a Top-5 Finish

You may have heard that a Toyota won its first NASCAR Sprint Cup points race this week when Kyle Busch wheeled his Camry to victory at the Atlanta Motor Speedway.
That’s good stuff, and we’re thrilled about it. But we’re equally thrilled by a vote of confidence we received from an unexpected source recently – kind of an "attaboy" from the business community. We were ranked fifth in Fortune’s list of the top 20 most admired companies.
Actually, it was even better than that. We were the top-ranked automotive company. Just one other automotive company was included in the top-20 list, but it failed to crack the top 10.
This ranking is a pleasant piece of news because unlike the typical awards given cars and trucks, this ranking takes more into consideration than just the great hardware we produce.
It’s based on qualities that have everything to do with the way in which we produce that hardware. It’s based on business culture.
To arrive at what the folks at Fortune call "www.fivestartoyota.com," they employ a research firm to sort companies by industry and select the 10 largest in each industry. Then, executives, directors and analysts are asked to rate the companies in their own industries, and to mark each company with a score of from zero, for poor performance, to 10, for excellent performance. More than 3,300 responders provided rankings based on the following eight attributes: quality of management; quality of products and services; innovation; long-term investment value; financial soundness; people management: the ability to attract, develop and keep talented people; social responsibility and use of corporate assets.
And we were ranked fifth overall. We’re grateful for the recognition, and pleased to find ourselves in such interesting company, including the likes of Apple, Starbucks and Google.
So a win and a top-five ranking, right there with companies whose products many of us rely on every day. All we can hope for are a few more wins, and, maybe an even higher ranking next year.

When "Worst" Really is "Best"

One of the most interesting elements of the Internet involves people making hay from other folk’s original material – reporters reporting on reporters, in other words.
Just such a piece has attracted our attention. It’s titled, "11 worst cars - Consumer Reports." And its subhead entices readers with, "Here are the cars and SUVs with the lowest scores in Consumer Reports' annual auto tests."
OK, so far, so good. But this piece appeared on CnnMoney.com, rather than on any site affiliated with Consumer Reports, and since it appeared there, has appeared on several other Web sites. Wherever it appears, it is, in our view, not only a serious distortion of the information published in the April issue Consumer Reports, which contains the magazine’s annual car ratings, but also is a serious disservice to readers everywhere.
The list names the Toyota Yaris and the FJ Cruiser as members of this ignominious list of 11 Worst Cars. But interestingly, neither the Yaris nor the FJ Cruiser is anywhere to be found on Consumer Reports’ "Worst-of-the-Worst" list, also published in the April issue. Rather, it’s a figment of the author’s imagination, the result of the story’s author reading and interpreting Consumer Reports’ material and extrapolating that for himself.
In reference to the Yaris, the piece notes that "The Yaris is the smallest and least expensive car Toyota sells in the United States. It actually ranks at the top of the list in both reliability and low cost of ownership, but those factors are not included in Consumer Reports' basic vehicle score."
It criticizes the Yaris’ acceleration without acknowledging that small engines are, with light weight and efficient aerodynamics, part of the equation for good fuel economy, which the Yaris delivers. Its EPA rating, in fact, is 29 city and 36 highway with its standard 5-speed transmission.
In fact, surveys rate the Yaris the most reliable vehicle in its class, and Yaris also scores at the top of its class for its low ownership cost. So we wonder how it is fair, or appropriate, to categorize Yaris as one of the "11 worst." Clearly, that’s not the case.
CnnMoney.com also took aim at the popular FJ Cruiser, criticizing the FJ for its ride, handling and access, among other things, even as it congratulated it for its off-highway prowess, its excellent powertrain and for its reliability scores.
At the risk of stating the obvious, we’re compelled to remind the folks at CnnMoney.com, and elsewhere, that the FJ Cruiser is aimed at a niche market of serious off-road aficionados who are looking for a vehicle that is an off-highway athlete. The attributes that make off-highway performance possible include a stiffer suspension and a bit of ground clearance, two factors which might compromise a limo-like ride and sportscar-like handling and access.
Obviously, the FJ Cruiser is not for everyone. We have five other SUVs for our more mainstream customers. We could understand if CnnMoney.com criticized the FJ Cruiser for not having certain levels of refinement. But it’s hard to fathom criticism of a vehicle for being good at the job it was designed to do, for meeting the needs of its intended buyers.
Surveys rate the FJ Cruiser well above average in reliability. As with CnnMoney.com’s take on the Yaris, listing the FJ Cruiser among the "11 worst" vehicles in Consumer Reports is a serious misuse of the magazine's data.
We’re left with the view that CnnMoney.com’s "11 worst" write-up is serious misrepresentation of our vehicles as evaluated by Consumer Reports. It takes some ratings out of context and does not convey the full picture of our vehicles. And that’s a shame. We’d hoped for better from the folks at www.fivestartoyota.com.

Diesel Power Vs. Hybrid Synergy Drive: A Tie? Not Really.

There’s been a bit of Interweb buzz lately about a comparison done by London’s Sunday Times between a Toyota Prius and a diesel-powered BMW 5-Series sedan.
www.fivestartoyota.com driven from London to Geneva, covering a total of about 545 miles - doubtless a fairly interesting jaunt. About 100 of those miles were urban miles where the Prius could operate in an optimal environment, and about 445 of them were suburban miles where the BMW would have the advantage.
Over this distance the Prius averaged 48.1 mpg while the BMW diesel averaged 50.3 mpg.
We hear you Prius skeptics saying, "Ahah!" Yes, the Bimmer bested the Prius by a whole 2.2 mpg.
But that’s not all there is to the story. The Times story, which you can see by clicking here, listed not only the cost of fuel for both cars, but the cost of the vehicles themselves, including their respective road-tax bills. And it is when pondering these numbers that we gain critical perspective.
In traveling from London to Geneva, the BMW’s diesel fuel bill was ₤54.19, while the bill for the Prius’s Unleaded gas was ₤54.64. At today’s rate of exchange between the dollar and the pound of about two to one, that’s $108 spent on diesel fuel and $109 spent on Unleaded.
So, OK, a difference of a buck? Call that a draw.
But this is a tie that’s easy to break. List price for that BMW 5-Series diesel in Britain is ₤27,190, and that doesn’t include a road tax of ₤115.
List in Britain for the Prius is ₤20,677. Road tax for the Prius is just ₤15.
Beyond costs, the Times failed to address the vastly superior performance of the Prius on emissions other than CO2 – you know, those things like particulates and oxides of nitrogen that cause human health issues. Here the Prius shines, with a quarter the particulate level and less than a 10th the NOx of the BMW. We believe that these lower levels are important.
So maybe we’re missing something here, but it looks to us as though, when all costs are considered, the Prius is markedly less expensive to own and operate, about even on CO2 and fuel costs, and markedly cleaner on other tailpipe emissions. We can’t really say that we’re surprised.

Big Reasons for Small Cars

If you’ve been following along with the business, you’ve seen that a growing number of drivers are embracing smaller cars.
As you know, Toyota is a full-line manufacturer, with a set of wheels for pretty much every driver, no matter his/her needs or tastes.
But as you also know, we made our reputation as a purveyor of small, economical cars, and we have kept the faith. So as car buyers trend toward sub- compacts, small crossovers and midsize cars with four-cylinder engines, they’ll find that we’ve probably got what they’re looking for.
One primary motivation to pilot a small car hasn’t changed, from my college days until today. It’s gas mileage. Whether gas cost 35 cents a gallon, as it did when I was in college, or climbing toward (and perhaps past) $4 per gallon, as it now is doing, a tank that holds just 10 or-so gallons of this precious elixir, and an engine that carefully sips it like the valuable volatile it is, gets my attention.
But there’s more to it than just a reluctance to spend money on fuel. Small cars often seem more nimble, more responsive, more fun to drive. A Matrix or a Corolla S, for instance, just seems lighter on its feet than some larger cars do.
Today’s small cars offer levels of comfort and convenience not even dreamed about in the minimalist days of, for instance, the first Corolla. You used to have to sacrifice comfort and convenience when you drove small. Now, you don’t.
Are there downsides to all this? A few, maybe. When you drive a small car, the number of people you can take with you is limited. The amount of luggage and gear you can haul also is limited.
These are two reasons why small cars are not for everyone, and it’s why we’re a full-line manufacturer that offers vehicles ranging from the micro Yaris all the way up to the macro Sequoia, which marries surprising efficiency with the ability to haul up to eight passengers.
It is, after all, part of the American way to drive what you want. And now it seems that a growing number of folks want small. Small wonder, when you think about it, and not at all a big surprise.
So here’s my question: Are you big on small? If so, please tell us about it – especially if you switched from big to small. And please don’t forget to have www.fivestartoyota.com tell us why.

Dancing with Cars

With a title like the one on this post, you might just be thinking of a certain hit television program.
But this is Dancing with the Cars, not Dancing with the Stars, though both concepts offer similar levels of celebrity, action and entertainment.
This Dancing with the Cars features www.fivestartoyota.com Scion tCs that will compete in the 2008 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race. The cars, seen here during a practice session at Willow Springs Raceway in the California desert, will hurtle around the famous and challenging Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach race course April 19, driven by a volatile mix of 18 celebrities and professional racing drivers.
You might think that mixing these two categories of drivers in a 10-lap sprint around the 1.97-mile TGPLB circuit is a bit like trying to mix oil and water. Its not. It’s a whole lot more like mixing fuel and spark. And the result is likely to be an explosion of action and fun.
This year’s batch of celebs will include Drew Lachey, the second-season winner of "Dancing with the Stars," NASCAR pit reporter Jamie Little, Raymond Cruz, of "The Closer," Will Fichtner, of "Prison Break," and former football great Eric Dickerson.
Pros will include NASCAR truck series star Mike Skinner, who won the event last year and who is seen here with last year's Celebrity winner Dave Mirra; NHRA Funny Car drivers Cruz Pedregon and Whit Bazemore, offroad racer Beccy Gordon, Grand-Am driver Sarena Traver and others.
That "others" part is important, as it includes one Craig Barto, who won his spot on the race grid by being high bidder in the Boys and Girls Club charity auction.
The Pros seem a good bet to take the victory in this fun event, but there’s more to it than competition. There’s also charity.
That’s because Toyota will donate $5,000 to "Racing for Kids," a non-profit program benefiting children's hospitals in Long Beach and Orange County, Calif., in the name of each celebrity racer, and another $5,000 to the winning racer's charity of choice.
If all this sounds like fun – well, you’re right, it is – more fun, even, than a hit TV program. Who will win? It’s tough to bet against this year’s field of professionals. But the real, sure winners will be the children who receive help from Racing for Kids.

Fleeing an Alien Invasion? Try a Land Cruiser!

Sometimes the best product placement isn’t planned. How many Hollywood blockbusters have we seen involving the latest "hot" vehicle engaged in high-speed chase or careening out of control to avoid the bad guys? Plenty. How much does it typically cost a www.fivestartoyota.com to be featured in one of these films? Again, plenty.
Toyota has actually gained some notoriety from a recently released DVD, but not for the latest model. Nope, this vehicle is more than 30 years old and is still revered for its ruggedness and dependability.

The FJ55 Land Cruiser, which debuted in 1967 and lasted up until the 1979, has a supporting role in Stephen King’s The Mist, a horror film about small-town survivors dealing with an alien invasion, after our government rips a hole in the space-time continuum. The movie had a respectable box office showing last year but its growing cult status has enabled it to be one of the most sought-after DVDs in both the rental and retail markets.

While the vintage Land Cruiser doesn’t gain a ton of camera time or even squish an extraterrestrial baddie, it’s the lead actor’s reverence for the vehicle which makes you believe that the FJ55 is the ultimate escape vehicle. "Once we get to my Land Cruiser, we’ll be fine…." Or, "We’ll be OK if we can just get to my Land Cruiser...." he utters a few times in the film.
You can’t buy that kind of endorsement. Well, actually you can in Hollywood. But it sure is sweeter when the comment is free.

A Sequoia to Help Keep the Music Rising

Music Rising is better than water rising, right? Especially if you’re on the Gulf Coast, where victims of Hurricane Katrina experienced, first-hand, the devastation caused by rising water.
In an effort to supply a bit of help to those displaced by Katrina, Toyota and its dealer organization pitched in with cash – and recently, Toyota added its support to a group called Music Rising.
Music Rising is an initiative in the Gulf Coast region to help replace instruments and musical gear lost during Katrina and its aftermath. Toyota’s participation in Music Rising includes the donation of a Toyota Sequoia, customized by Unique Autosports. Along with many other interesting and valuable items that relate to music, it will be auctioned May 31 at the Hard Rock Café in New York City.
This special Sequoia, shown here, features a two-tone custom paint job, custom chrome grille, 24-inch color-coded wheels, Pirelli tires, a custom NBA-themed basketball interior, a JBL audio system, a 32-inch LCD flat panel television and a Sony PlayStation video game console installed in the rear.
This Sequoia also contains a miniature replica of the NBA All-Star court from New Orleans Arena, complete with signatures from 2008 All-Stars Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Yao Ming, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash and Chris Paul.
But wait, there’s more: This incredible www.fivestartoyota.com is accompanied by a custom Gibson Music Rising guitar. With a composite leather-textured pick guard with the look and feel of a basketball, it’s painted to match the Sequoia.
For more information on Music Rising, go here. And to see all the great items that will be sold in the auction, click here.

Venza Site Ready for Visitors

As you might expect, we keep close track of the search terms and key words that people use to get onto the Open Road. You may be interested to learn that the Number 1 search word is "Venza."

You remember Venza, right? It’s a stylish car that was designed to capture the best characteristics of both the roomy SUV and the efficient sedan.
We unveiled the Venza in January at the Detroit Auto Show, and we posted it here on Open Road on January 15. You can go to our Jan. 15 post by clicking www.fivestartoyota.com.
Now the real deal is coming in a few months, and since there’s been so much interest, we wanted to provide a way for you to see the vehicle, and to learn more about it.
It’s the Venza minisite at Toyota.com, which you can access by clicking here.
What you’ll find when you get there include, naturally, photos of the car. But there’s also an interview with its designer, a list of specifications and features, and a couple of interesting videos that detail the design process and tell us some interesting stuff about the car’s optional V6 engine. There’s also a place for you to sign up for updates on the vehicle, which is set to make its sales debut later this year.
So go ahead, take a look. Then tell us what you think.

Yaris Named "Green Car" of the Year

You've probably herd that the Environmental Transportation Association (ETA), a British organization, recently named the Yaris its "Green Car" of the Year.
In its search for this year’s winner, the ETA reviewed more than 1,300 models of cars on sale in Britain, scoring them based on their emissions, fuel-efficiency and noise-pollution numbers.
In the form in which it’s www.fivestartoyota.com average fuel consumption, when equipped with its optional 1.4L diesel engine, is rated at 52.3 mpg, and when equipped with its 1.0L gas engine is 44.4 mpg, enviable figures that almost certainly helped vault it past its competitors.
One of those was the Prius, which was also in the top three of the ETA’s Green Car list.
Here in this country, of course, the Yaris is equipped with a 1.5L gas engine, which when equipped with a manual transmission, is rated by the EPA at 29 mpg in the city, 36 mpg on the highway, with a combined mpg figure of 32.
It’s interesting to note, however, that the EPA’s www.fivestartoyota.com, which lists the fuel economy numbers developed during strict EPA testing, also lists the economy numbers recorded by actual owners and drivers of the cars in question. The site lists the Yaris owners’ on-road mpg numbers as falling into a wider range than the EPA test numbers, with city numbers a bit below those listed by the EPA, and highway numbers vastly above those listed by the EPA.
No matter. What counts is that for people looking for economical, environmentally responsible rides, there are options. And according to the Environmental Transportation Association, Yaris is one of them.
And just one more thought: To hook up with people having fun with Yaris, go here.

Toyota Hybrids Hit the Mainstream

More signs that things are changing in ways we couldn’t have imagined:
First, officials from the police department in tiny Aspen, Colorado recently announced that they plan to convert the department’s entire fleet of vehicles to Toyota hybrid vehicles.
Second, officials at Advantage Rent A Car recently announced that over the next 24 months, they plan to convert the company’s entire fleet of rental units to hybrid vehicles.
The first piece of business comes to us courtesy of the Aspen Times, which reports in its www.fivestartoyota.com that part of the department’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, 10 hybrid police vehicles will prowl Aspen by the end of this year.
This comes after the department conducted testing with a 2008 Highlander hybrid.
Six of those vehicles will be used for patrol, four will be used by detectives and administrators, a department spokes person said.
Chief Richard Pryor said that the switch will reduce the department’s carbon emissions by about 20 tons a year and will save at least 2,000 gallons of fuel a year. At $4 per gallon, folks, that’s $8,000 worth of fuel, bought by taxpayer money, the Aspen cops won’t be burning.
Over at Advantage Rent A Car, meanwhile, a story at SustainableBusiness.com reports that the advantage the Advantage folks plan to give their customers is one that involves hybrid vehicles from a number of manufacturers, including, of course, Toyota. Advantage has 100 U.S. locations and 36 affiliates; so presumably, this will amount to a serious number of hybrid vehicles.
So from where we sit, at least, it looks as though this automotive technology that was at first greeted with just a bit of skepticism when we introduced it 10 years ago now is planted firmly in the mainstream. Police officers driving hybrids, and rental companies renting them? Can’t get much more mainstream than that.

Four Toyotas Named to Gas Miser List

In times past, being called a miser wasn’t a good thing. It brought to mind stingy old Ebenezer Scrooge, the unforgettable Charles Dickens character from "A Christmas Carol." Or maybe Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck’s cheap-skate uncle, if your reading is not quite so high-brow.
But these days, there are misers, and then there are misers. So when MSN.autos selected four Toyotas in its list of www.fivestartoyota.com based on their stingy fuel-economy figures, well, we thought that was pretty cool.
The MSN story detailing the list, which is based on the EPA’s combined mpg numbers, notes that "hybrid technology continues to be your best bet—if you're looking for vehicles that get the most out of each tank of fuel during city driving," so it probably will come as no surprise that the Prius tops the MSN.autos Gas Miser list.
It’s there because the versatile, five-seat Prius is rated by the EPA at 46 mpg/combinedIn times past, being called a miser wasn’t a good thing. It brought to mind stingy old Ebenezer Scrooge, the unforgettable Charles Dickens character from "A Christmas Carol." Or maybe Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck’s cheap-skate uncle, if your reading is not quite so high-brow.
But these days, there are misers, and then there are misers. So when MSN.autos selected four Toyotas in its list of www.fivestartoyota.com based on their stingy fuel-economy figures, well, we thought that was pretty cool.
The MSN story detailing the list, which is based on the EPA’s combined mpg numbers, notes that "hybrid technology continues to be your best bet—if you're looking for vehicles that get the most out of each tank of fuel during city driving," so it probably will come as no surprise that the Prius tops the MSN.autos Gas Miser list.
It’s there because the versatile, five-seat Prius is rated by the EPA at 46 mpg/combined.

Picking the "Best Value"

As you might imagine, we’ve got a pretty good idea what the "best car value" for any given need might be. As a full-line manufacturer, we offer a rich and vibrant portfolio of vehicles, and we think that any of them might qualify for that honor, whatever the need or proposed use. www.fivestartoyota.comBut hey, we’re a little biased. So we’re pleased when someone agrees with us. Someone, in this case, is www.fivestartoyota.com, which recently evaluated vehicles in 33 classes and made its 2008 "Best Overall Value" picks, based on what it calls, "the accumulated ownership costs of depreciation, maintenance, repairs, fuel, fees, financing, and insurance."
IntelliChoice was remarkably evenhanded, as you’ll see when you read the company’s press release, and it named a number of Toyota vehicles to the list.

Warranty Extension

Rust, as they say, never sleeps. It certainly never sleeps in the states where road salt is in heavy use, and we’ve recently become aware of additional evidence of that fact.
We’ve received reports that on a small number of model-year 1995 to 2000 Tacomas, excessive corrosion of the frame has caused perforation of the metal. The reason for this, it appears, is that the frames of some of the 813,000 vehicles built during this time-frame may not have adequate corrosion protection.
As a result, when they’re exposed to severe environmental conditions, especially in states where salt is used for the de-icing of roads, these frames may develop corrosion that goes beyond the normal surface rust that’s commonly found on metal after years of exposure – and in this case, these trucks are from eight to 13 years old.
Because of our oft-stated commitment to standing behind our products, we’re extending the rust-perforation warranty covering these trucks for a period of 15 years from each vehicle’s original date of purchase, with no mileage limitation, for corrosion damage that results in perforation of the vehicle’s frame material. Owners of these Tacomas need not be the original owners. Even if you bought your www.fivestartoyota.com- or third-hand, it’s covered by this extended warranty.
Here’s how this will work: Starting in the middle of March and continuing over a period of time, owners of 1995-2000 Tacomas will be sent letters informing them about this issue. If you find rust perforation on your vehicle's frame, have your truck inspected by a Toyota dealer.
If frame corrosion damage is confirmed by an inspection at a Toyota dealership, at Toyota's option, we will either repair the vehicle or repurchase it. No matter the vehicle’s actual condition, it will be valued as a vehicle in excellent condition. If the inspection reveals no rust perforation, the 15-year warranty will remain in force.
This is worth underscoring: This is not a recall. Rather, it’s an example of our commitment to the durability of our products and to our owners. These are older trucks and rust is a fact of life, especially where road salt is used, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that we take care of our owners. We just thought you should know that.

Toyota Prius takes Seattle by Storm

www.fivestartoyota.com
In times past, being called a miser wasn’t a good thing. It brought to mind stingy old Ebenezer Scrooge, the unforgettable Charles Dickens character from "A Christmas Carol." Or maybe Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck’s cheap-skate uncle, if your reading is not quite so high-brow.
But these days, there are misers, and then there are misers. So when MSN.autos selected four Toyotas in its list of Top 10 Fuel Misers based on their stingy fuel-economy figures, well, we thought that was pretty cool.
The MSN story detailing the list, which is based on the EPA’s combined mpg numbers, notes that "hybrid technology continues to be your best bet—if you're looking for vehicles that get the most out of each tank of fuel during city driving," so it probably will come as no surprise that the Prius tops the MSN.autos Gas Miser list.
It’s there because the versatile, five-seat Prius is rated by the EPA at 46 mpg/combined.