Toyota's New French Plant Rolls Out Its 1st Yaris

Tokyo -TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION (TMC) held a company ceremony today to mark the start of Yaris compact car production at Toyota Motor Manufacturing France S.A.S. (TMMF), Toyota's new vehicle production plant in Valenciennces, France.

The "First Yaris Celebration", which started at 11 a.m. local time (7 p.m., Japan time), was attended by the top-20 company officials involved in TMC's European operations, including TMC Chairman Hiroshi Okuda and TMC Executive Vice President Kosuke Yamamoto, and joined by about 1,100 TMMF employees.

Chairman Okuda proclaimed the new plant, located in northern France as Toyota's first full-scale vehicle production plant on the European continent and established in line with Toyota's basic policy to build where sold, as "an important base for Toyota to develop as an automaker in Europe."

Once fully operational, the highly environmentally conscious plant will produce 150,000 units of the Yaris (known as the Vitz in Japan). Total investment will come to approximately 4 billion francs (about 80 billion yen at the exchange rate at the time the site for TMMF was announced in December 1997). Presently, the number of employees at the plant, for which ground was first broken in November 1998, is about 1,100, but plans call for this to increase to approximately 2,000 once full production is reached.

The Yaris, winner of the European Car of the Year 2000 award following its April 1999 launch, has been highly praised throughout Europe for its styling and value. More than 195,000 units were sold last year.

While today's ceremony was an in-company event, Toyota plans to hold an opening ceremony for attendance by top French government officials and related persons in late May.