A Journey With A Difference

The All Blacks will play Italy in Toyota City at next year’s World Cup. GREGOR PAUL believes both the city and the stadium will make for an engaging visit for those Kiwis who make it to Japan.

IT IS POSSIBLE, MAYBE EVEN PROBABLE, that most New Zealanders haven’t heard of Toyota City. Just as likely is that on discovering its existence, New Zealanders will immediately guess that the city takes its name from the motor corporation. They would be right.

The Toyota Motor Corporation dominates the city which has a population of around 420,000. It is the major employer, having four plants in the area as well as its corporate headquarters. But it is not the only major automotive presence in the city. Several of Japan’s leading car manufacturers have plants in the city either assembling finished cars or creating specialist parts for global exportation.

It is then, a city dominated by the car industry and its history reflects that. The city was originally called Koromo and built largely on the silk trade – with the wider region being a major producer. But as the silk industry fell into decline in the 1930s, Koromo fell upon harder times.

It was through economic hardship that local man Kiichiro Toyoda began to look at ways to transform or modernise his family’s loom business. To cut a long story short, what effectively transpired was the creation of the Toyota Motor Corporation. They produced their first vehicle – the AA Sedan in 1936 – but it was in the years following the second world war that Toyota began the transformation into the production giant it has become.

Company executives visited the United States in the 1950s, among other countries, and after studying design and production around the globe, Toyota was able to strike the magic formula of building affordable, yet comfortable and efficient cars that enabled it to become the world’s largest manufacturer.