The shift to Plano, Texas, affects about 2,000 people at Toyota’s U.S. sales headquarters in Torrance, California, 1,000 employees from its Kentucky engineering and manufacturing unit, and some staff from its holding company in New York, the carmaker said in a statement yesterday. About 1,000 people from its finance company will also go to Texas by 2017, Toyota said. Headquarters construction is projected to be complete in late 2016 or early 2017.
“Toyota’s announced move to Texas is a shock since the automaker has been part of the Southern California community for decades, but it indicates that money -– and tax incentives –- talks when it comes to headquarters locations,” said Jack Nerad, senior industry analyst for Kelley Blue Book. “The dollar savings from the relocation should be fairly easy to quantify, but what’s much harder to quantify is the cost in business disruption and ‘brain-drain’ such a move can cause.”
The relocation is a win for Texas Governor Rick Perry’s campaign to lure California companies and a blow to the Golden State, the biggest U.S. auto market and proponent of the strictest clean-air rules. Toyota’s Prius hybrid has been California’s top-selling model for the past two years and helped secure a leading 22 percent market share. Perry has made repeated visits to California to entice businesses to his state with promises of lower taxes and easier regulations.
