We took delivery of a new set of wheels today. I have driven many Japanese and Korean engineered vehicles over the years, but this is the first that isn’t coming from a car-rental agency. After assessing the competition, our choice in the compact SUV cross-over category was the Toyota Rav4. Notwithstanding its Asian engineering, the Rav4 is assembled in Toyota’s new Woodstock, Ontario plant. Almost certainly, some of the parts were made in my home town of Palmerston.
While it’s entirely coincidental, we took delivery on the same day the Canadian Auto Workers union is struggling to reach a labour cost-saving deal that might induce Chrysler to continue manufacturing cars in Ontario. This, while Chrysler and General Motors are struggling to survive and seeking billions of tax-supported bailout dollars and are still likely to slip into bankruptcy. Meanwhile, our local Toyota dealer’s showroom resembled a subway station at rush-hour (almost). Now I’m hoping the fabled Japanese quality is reality. Certainly, assembling autos using non-union labour from parts sourced locally seems to be paying off.
Toyota has become a major manufacturing powerhouse in Waterloo-Wellington since it opened its first plant in Cambridge nearly 20 years ago. Numerous parts manufacturers in southwestern Ontario towns ship components to the Cambridge and Woodstock assembly plants. The managing director of Toyota Canada is Stephen Beatty of the same family whose farm and home equipment manufacturing factories were dominant in Wellington County for decades, until surpassed by foreign competitors. I wonder how the Beatty ancestors, whose workers turned out the equipment to I used half a century ago to clean cattle stables, would react to seeing me drive up in a sparkling new SUV built by their descendant and some of those of their factory workers of the 1950s. The ride keeps rolling and fuelling hope for Southwestern Ontario.
