A closer look at Toyota Motor Corp.'s record profit shows why the world's largest automaker is leaving behind its Hollywood beginnings.
While Toyota reported Tuesday it earned more money in last quarter than any automaker on the planet, profit from North America trailed behind the region's industry leader, Ford Motor Co. Within Toyota itself, Japanese operations contributed more than double the income North America did.
President Akio Toyoda, whose grandfather founded the company that opened its first U.S. office 57 years ago in a defunct Hollywood dealership, is starting to address that. Toyota this month opens an office in Texas that marks the beginning of a shift of almost all of its nonmanufacturing operations — which are mostly in high-cost California now — to one of the cheapest states.
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