Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Monday, April 28.
It would be really easy to think we planned our Automotive News 100th anniversary interview with Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda to coincide with Toyota Motor Corp.’s potential blockbuster acquisition of Toyota Industries Corp. in a deal valued at $42 billion.
Planning is everything, right? Not this time. But the two stories by Hans Greimel dovetail nicely today.
“We can say 1925 was a special year not just for Automotive News, but also for Toyota Motor. It was a very significant year, and probably a game-changer year,” Toyoda told Greimel, noting that his father, Shoichiro Toyoda, a longtime president and chairman of the company, also was born in 1925.
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Meanwhile, Toyota confirmed over the weekend that the Toyota Industries deal is possible, but not a sure thing, either.
As Greimel wrote, Toyota Industries was founded in 1926 by Toyoda’s great-grandfather Sakichi Toyoda. It was originally named Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. It changed its name to Toyota Industries Corp. in 2001 to reflect the vast array of businesses it had branched into over the decades.
Today, it still makes automatic weaving machines for textiles. But it is also one of the world’s top makers of forklifts. Toyota Industries produces an array of automotive parts as well, including engines, hybrid-vehicle batteries, converters, inverters and on-board chargers for electrified vehicles, our story says.
Greimel, who is based in Tokyo, has been a busy journalist. He also wrote this story about Taiwanese technology company Foxconn and its emerging plans for the former General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio. The company is rapidly refurbishing the sprawling assembly complex visible from Interstate 80 as a U.S. production hub.
The plant, which has capacity for hundreds of thousands of vehicles when fully tooled, could be pumping out cars as early as next year, our story says. The product? If all goes to plan, the Model C all-electric utility could help catapult Foxconn into the U.S. market as one of its newest automotive players, Greimel wrote.
In the world of dealership mergers and acquisitions, Gail Kachadourian Howe reports today that Hendrick Automotive Group will acquire Love Automotive’s final two dealerships in Columbia, S.C.
The deal to buy Love Chevrolet and Love GMC is expected to close by July, Hendrick Automotive spokesperson David Harris said in our story. The stores, about a mile from each other, will be renamed Hendrick Chevrolet and Hendrick GMC. The purchase price was undisclosed.
One last update: Last week we previewed the spectacular estate sale at the 9,000-square-foot home of the late Ford CEO Don Petersen in suburban Detroit. The story was followed by our affiliate Crain’s Detroit Business and at least one major local news organization. The turnout was so overwhelming that the organizers from AOM Estate Sales postponed the final day of the event for safety and traffic issues. No word yet today on when the final day of the sale will be rescheduled.
Looking ahead to Tuesday, we’ll be covering General Motors’ first-quarter earnings report first thing in the morning.
That’s it for now. Have a great rest of your day.
