Toyota Auto Body () is a manufacturing subsidiary of the Toyota group based in Japan. It is headquartered in Kariya, Aichi and was established in 1945. The company has plants in the Mie and Aichi prefectures and other facilities around Japan and abroad.
The company was formed through a corporate spin-off from Toyota. In its early years, it produced auto bodies. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, it centred on truck production, before slowly switching focus to light vehicles (mostly vans) from the late 1960s onwards. In the 2000s, it absorbed the vehicle manufacturing operations of sister companies Araco and Gifu Auto Body.
As part of Toyota, Toyota Auto Body develops and produces a range of minivans, SUVs, light commercial vehicles and auto parts.
History
Toyota Auto Body was established on 31 August 1945 as a corporate spin-off of Toyota Motor Industry's Kariya plant with the name . At first, it produced auto bodies for Toyota. In 1951, the company became the first Japanese manufacturer in producing a truck body made completely of steel. In 1953, the company adopted its present name. In January 1957, it opened an assembly facility in Kariya for mass-producing trucks. In November 1959, it created a vehicle conversion subsidiary, Kariya Painting (later renamed Tokai Utility Motor).
In the early 1960s, Toyota gave clear functions to some of its then (subcontracting) companies: Toyota Auto Body was centred on producing trucks; Kanto Auto Works passenger vans and pickups; Arakawa Auto Body Land Cruisers and special vehicles. In 1960, Toyota Auto Body produced 74,000 trucks (including large trucks, the Stout, the ToyoAce), an 87% of Toyota's overall truck production and a 48% of its total vehicle production. In 1964, truck production from Toyota Auto Body (large trucks, the Stout, the ToyoAce, the Dyna) rose to 116,000 trucks, comprising 90% of Toyota's truck production and 27% of all vehicles.
In January 1964, Toyota Auto Body opened a second assembly facility in Kariya, the Fujimatsu plant, which produced the first Japanese hard-top car during the 1960s, the Corona Hard-top. The company also became the first in assembling mass-produced passenger cars. The production percentage of passenger cars and other light vehicles would increase for the company during the following years. In the late 1960s, Toyota Auto Body led the development of a small van with a design, similar to European ones at the time, but, according to former Toyota senior employee Akira Kawahara, something yet unseen in the Japanese industry. In 1967, Toyota Auto Body began producing the van, named as HiAce. It became the most produced model from the company with more than 6 million units . Toyota Auto Body would continue developing and producing design vans. In 1970, Toyota Auto Body production was 149,000 passenger cars and 142,000 commercial vehicles (trucks and buses), although the actual percentage declined to 17.6% of Toyota's total vehicle production.
In the 1970s, Toyota Auto Body was one of the first companies in using quality function deployment (QFD), paralleling the initial developments from Yoji Akao at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The rest of the Toyota group adopted the method in 1979. The improvements of Toyota Auto Body on QFD influenced Ford into adopting it.
In 1992, the company established Toyota Body Seiko, an auto parts subsidiary, and began investments to increase the production of vehicles, as the rest of its passenger car business was in decline. In December 1993, Toyota Auto Body opened the van-focused Inabe plant. By the mid-1990s, Toyota Auto Body ventured into the production of high-end passenger vans derived from the HiAce. In 1995, it started producing the Granvia, a HiAce-based semi-bonneted van made to comply with European safety regulations. From the Granvia the company developed the Alphard which was launched in 2002. In 2008, it introduced an Alphard twin vehicle, the Vellfire.
In May 2001, Toyota announced it would consolidate all production of Toyota-badged cars intended for the Japanese market into Toyota Auto Body by moving the assembly of the LiteAce/TownAce Noah and its successor (Noah) from Daihatsu. In 2004, Toyota Auto Body incorporated the auto body and vehicle production businesses from Araco. In 2005, the Kariya plant was repurposed for converting vehicles instead of producing trucks. In the fiscal year ended March 2007, Toyota Auto Body achieved its largest production volume, with about 745,000 vehicles produced during the period. In 2007, Gifu Auto Body became a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota Auto Body.