NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.) is a joint venture between Toyota and GM that was established in Fremont, California in 1984. It was the first automotive joint venture plant in the US. It also represents Toyota’s first American production facility. NUMMI currently employs roughly 5,500 people with 60% of its production for Toyota. It currently produces the Corolla, the Tacoma and the Pontiac Vibe (which is based on the Toyota Matrix).

GM has announced that it will discontinue its partnership with Toyota. Ongoing negotiations between the two companies ended with GMs decision, as part of its bankruptcy, to withdraw from the 25-year-old venture. Neither company has disclosed the financial terms of GM’s decision to turn the plant over to Toyota.

Effective this August, GM will discontinue production of the Pontiac Vibe as it abandons the Pontiac nameplate. With that, the joint venture between GM and Toyota will come to a close. The fate of the production facility is very unsettled at this point. Toyota had hoped to reach an agreement with GM and has declined to comment about any plans that it has for NUMMI.

Toyota has a rich history at the NUMMI facility, and it ranks with other Toyota plants as among the most productive automotive facilities in North America. It is a massive plant, spanning the same size as nearly 90 football fields. There had been talks until recently of a joint venture whereby a version of the Toyota Prius would be manufactured there as a GM product. Workers at NUMMI hope that Toyota will amend those plans to build the Prius at the plant.

It is, however, the only unionized Toyota plant in North America. It is also twice the average age of other Toyota facilities. Given the current economic situation- which has already strained Toyota’s bottom line- it is a difficult choice for Toyota.

As yet, there has been no public discussion of a third party entering into a joint venture at NUMMI, picking up where GM left off. Perhaps another company would like to manufacture a version of the Prius under their name. Only time will tell. In the meantime, nearly 5,500 employees will continue to work with an uncertain future.

Scion’s final limited-production vehicle for 2009, the xD Release Series 2.0 (xD RS 2.0), will be available at dealer showrooms later this month. It comes exclusively in Electric Wasabi green exterior paint and is also distinguished with unique interior modifications. The xD features a touch screen Pioneer Audio Visual Navigation (AVN) head unit with flash memory, voice recognition, and Bluetooth®. For media player flexibility, the AVN unit comes with USB, SD card, and iPod® connectivity. The Pioneer AVN head unit is also satellite radio, rear view camera and HD Radio® ready and will play iPod videos when the parking brake is engaged.

In addition, users can select from over 32,000 colors to customize the 5.8-inch high-resolution WVGA LCD touch-panel display. The driver can plan a roadtrip at home by downloading the freeware application AVIC Feeds to a computer, making a personalized destination directory and then transferring the data to the headunit using SD card or USB memory device.

Electric Wasabi accents the xD’s interior with four-in-one interior lights, and “Release Series 2.0” door sills illuminated with white back lighting. Silver accented seat fabric and individually numbered badging add to the vehicle’s uniqueness.

Release Series wheel covers also distinguish this limited production xD. A color-keyed rear spoiler will be available as an option.

Scion will only build 1,600 units of the xD RS 2.0. The xD RS 2.0 model will carry a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $1,270 over the base price of the xD. The base MSRP for the standard xD with a manual transmission is $14,650, while the standard xD with an automatic transmission model carries a MSRP of $15,450. The available Electric Wasabi spoiler has a MSRP of $285, not including installation.

The delivery, processing and handling (DPH) fee for all Scion models is $670 and is not included in the MSRP. DPH fee for vehicles distributed by Southeast Toyota (SET) and Gulf States Toyota (GST) may vary.

America’s best-selling car in 2008 is not made by the Big Three- or even by Toyota. It is made by Little Tikes, based out of Hudson, Ohio. The familiar red and yellow Cozy Coupe toy car sold over 457,000 units in 2008, edging out the Toyota Camry for the honor of best-selling passenger car in America.

Over the past three decades, more than 10 million Little Tikes Cozy Coupes have been sold, earning it a recent induction into the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in Cleveland. In addition to the Cozy Coupe, Little Tikes also manufactures a police vehicle, a fire vehicle, a Princess Cozy Coupe and a pickup truck, among countless other toys.

What does this mean for the auto industry? Well, it shows that people are very much interested in “green” technology. The Cozy Coupe uses no gas and never needs to be plugged in, giving it the smallest carbon footprint of any mass-produced of car. It is also among the safest, with fewer highway fatalities than any other car in America.

Finally, it is considerably less expensive than other cars. Priced thousands less than the competition, the Cozy Coupe is able to maintain sales while the major car makers see drops in sales of 30% to 60% and more. Even as auto sales plummet, consumers continue to seek out Cozy Coupes.

Safe, efficient and reliable, the Cozy Coupe can teach a value lesson to all of the major auto makers. It’s what the people want.

In keeping with the new trend of sugar-coating sales reports, Toyota has announced that May sales “jumped 20.6% compared to April 2009.” This is a trend that all of the major auto makers have been following in an attempt to bury real figures beneath nonsense.

The problem with this type of reporting is that it reflects seasonal sales shifts rather than “the big jump in consumer confidence” that Toyota is claiming.

The real number- the one that auto makers have traditionally used until this economic collapse- represents a continued severe downturn in sales. When compared year-on-year, May 2009 saw a 38.4 % decline from May, 2008.

This actually reflects a trend toward worsening conditions. The year-on-year figures show consistent declines in sales- with declines getting more severe with each month. Figures show a 34.4% drop in January, a 37.3% drop in February, a 36.0% drop in March and a 41.9% drop in April. Notwithstanding seasonal figures, this reflects an unfavorable sales trend that the car makers, politicians and economists are hoping to bury under falsely rosy statistics.

The news was devastating to some. As part of its bankruptcy, Chrysler plans to eliminate nearly 800 dealerships. GM has also announced plans to eliminate 2,600 dealerships (with 300,000 employees) this year and another 1,000 dealerships by the end of next year.

With Chrysler’s bankruptcy protection (and the expectation of a bankruptcy filing at GM), the affected dealerships can expect to be, “left out in the cold,” according to one industry insider. “There won’t be a buyback of cars or parts. The dealers will lose their affiliation but will be stuck with all of their inventory.”

Toyota is said to be actively approaching many former Chrysler and GM dealerships. Of particular interest to Toyota are those dealerships that already have a Toyota franchise in place.

What deals will be made and what impact this will ultimately have is unclear. Toyota’s strength is the relative scarcity of dealerships. Toyota dealerships are more spread out than domestic counterparts, so there is less internal competition.

As Toyota looks to convert some of the old Chrysler and GM dealers, it will have to take care not to over-saturate any existing markets. Since most of Chrysler and GM’s cuts are in urban and suburban markets, Scion may prove to be the biggest beneficiary of the franchise change.

The wild card in all this is that old inventory. Dealers are supposed to try to sell it to surviving franchises. This works fine for companies like AutoNation, Inc which owns other franchises, but smaller dealerships will be left trying to sell entire inventories in a market that is already weak. These dealers can expect to get only a fraction of what they paid for their inventories.

Their alternative is to take a smaller loss by selling their products off at rock-bottom prices. This could cause a sudden, severe deflation of car prices across the board that would affect not just Chrysler and GM, but Toyota as well.

It’s a bleak prospect for sales and economic recovery that would likely knock the auto industry back for years- something that everybody will be looking to avoid.

However it turns out, the ripple effect from these bankruptcies will echo throughout the industry for years to come.

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s biggest automaker, forecast a much bigger-than-expected $8.6 billion loss for its current fiscal year and said it would sell about 1 million fewer vehicles as it scrambles to cut costs amid a severe market downturn. Worse news for the auto industry (and economy in general) is Toyota’s new forecast for fiscal year 2010. Toyota now estimates worldwide sales to be about 6.5 million units- a decrease of 1.06 million units from fiscal year 2009 and half a million units less than last year’s “worst case scenario.” That’s a tremendous drop from fiscal year 2008, when Toyota sold over 9 million vehicles worldwide.

In December, 2008, Toyoland.com reported on the failing economy. At that time, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe stated, “The tough times are hitting us far faster, wider and deeper than expected.” Watanabe promised cost-cutting measures to insure that Toyota would realize profitability even if worldwide sales fall to 7 million vehicles- what he called the “bottom line” for Toyota. Watanabe added that the economic situation “is an unprecedented crisis requiring urgent action.”

It appears that Toyota is prepared to weather the economic crisis- albeit with continued operating losses- with the expectation that it will dominate the market when the economy recovers. Watanabe commented on the newly revised outlook: “It appears to take some more time before the financial markets in the U.S. and Europe normalize and the global economy recovers.”

For now, Toyota plans deeper cost-cutting measures. Also, Toyota hopes to boost sales with new models- emphasizing hybrid and compact models. Toyota also plans to focus on “resource-rich and developing countries.”