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Just thought I'd share if anyone is interested. California recently formed a commission to study the effects on California of closing NUMMI. The commission is made up of state and local politicians, a UC Berkeley economics professor, and actor Danny Glover, among others. Their report was released today as well as a letter sent to Toyota President, Akio Toyoda.http://treasurer.ca.gov/nummi/report.pd ... letter.pdf

The ripple effects of the closure are huge.Looks like Toyota is doing what all overly big companies end up doing... losing their way. I remember when Chevys rattled and Toyotas didn't. Now Chevy is building very tight vehicles and Toyotas are starting to decontent their "quality" somewhat. Too bad that NUMMI couldn't be taken over by some entity to develop and produce next generation transportation. California could do it. Look at Tesla and what they have accomplished. Any conspiracy theories yet on the closing of NUMMI and Toyota's sudden onset of its new travails?

SAd

That's a very political "white paper", authored by many of the same players who have driven the state of California into bankruptcy. Drill down, and their argument is simply "Toyota is a big company that makes a lot of money, you should therefore keep NUMMI". Doesn't address the profitability (or lack thereof) of NUMMI. Toyota doesn't make lots of money by losing money at each factory and making it up in volume.Bottom line, there is excess capacity in the auto manufacturing world. This was the case prior to the recession, industry analysts had been pointing this out for several years. When cutting capacity, it doesn't make sense to keep a factory in a high cost state like California. The buffoons who run California would be a great bit of entertainment if there weren't so many real people's jobs, families and businesses that are adversely affected by them. It is a real tragedy here, NUMMI's demise is one highly visible example, but it is happening here every day.

This is an interesting read. Toyota has argued that NUMMI is no longer viable because General Motors pulledout as a result of its bankruptcy in summer 2009. GM, however, has accounted foran average of only 15 percent of NUMMI’s production between 2001-2009."This clearly show that the Vibe had little or no impact of the plant and ultimately the reason for Toyota to close this plant is political as NUMMI is the only Toyota facility in the US that is union.

Don't forget, the reason Toyota got into NUMMI with GM was political. They were fighting "voluntary" import quotas back in the '80s, this was a way to gain political points to keep the "voluntary" quotas from becoming mandatory, and get a foothold in the U.S. for production here.

...how does that saying go? POLITICS makes strange bedfellows...and even stranger CHILDREN."

Quote, originally posted by Old Tele man »...how does that saying go? POLITICS makes strange bedfellows...and even stranger CHILDREN."Well stated!