TOYOTA OPENS EUROPEAN DESIGN CENTER

Toyota City―TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION today officially opened its recently completed European design center, the Toyota Europe Office of Creation (Toyota EPOC) at a site near Brussels, Belgium. The new center, under construction since June of last year, becomes Toyota's second overseas design center, following Calty Design Research Inc., established in the U.S. in 1973.

The new center, which represents a total investment of roughly 340 million Belgian francs (about ¥1.4 billion), features exterior and interior design studios, a full-scale painting booth, and a design room. The center aims at acquiring a deeper understanding and appreciation of the tastes, customs, and sense of values of European consumers, as well as studying design trends and working on the development of advanced designs for interiors, exteriors, and color design.

To date, Toyota has stationed designers at its Europe Office in Brussels in order to gather the latest European design-related information. With highly sophisticated products being planned for the 1990s by the world's automotive industry, the anticipated approach of an extremely competitive era, and with increasing importance being placed on design aspects in relation to product value, Toyota EPOC will provide the company with a foundation that will allow it to meet the challenges of these expected developments.

In addition, Toyota EPOC will enable Toyota to gain a leading position in the area of auto design in the 1990s and to carry out design research work under a spirit of enhanced cooperation and competition between European and Japanese designers.

Toyota EPOC, initially staffed with about a dozen employees, is slated to increase its employee base to more than 20 in 1995.