22 Surprising Facts About Scion & Toyota

Toyota vehicles are ubiquitous on today’s roads and have earned a reputation for enduring quality, rugged durability, and innovation. The vehicles coming out of Toyota plants cover a spectrum of types, from burly full-size pickup trucks to eco-friendly electric hybrids like the Prius. Toyota’s Scion line of vehicles have established new ways for a car company to involve its customers in the ownership process, but these and other innovations come on the back of a long history of automotive achievements, milestones, and little-known facts. Read on to discover some fun and surprising facts about Toyota and Scion.

1. Toyota first began production of vehicles in 1937 and have operated continually despite such interruptions as war, earthquakes, and tsunamis. It would be 20 years before the company began to do business in America in 1957.

2. Over 350,000 Americans work for Toyota in various capacities and at multiple sites across the country.

3. There are more than 1,500 Toyota, Lexus, and Scion dealerships in the United States, making finding somewhere to buy or service Toyotas an easy affair.

4. The Toyota Prius, a gasoline electric hybrid sedan, is now available in over 70 countries and is the most successful hybrid to be offered to date.

5. Despite the fact that the company is called Toyota, the company’s founder actually spelled his name Toyoda.

6. Toyota has earned a reputation for dependability. In 2012, eight different Toyota vehicles won honors in the J.D. Power and Associates Vehicle Dependability Study.

7. Scion, a unique division of Toyota that produces efficient, value-oriented vehicles was founded in 2002.

8. By some estimates, 80 percent of Toyotas produced in the last 20 years are still in service today.

9. Torrance, California, is the site for the North American headquarters for Toyota.

10. The Toyota Tundra, the automaker’s full-size pickup truck, comes off of assembly lines in Texas.

11. Toyota is the third largest automotive manufacturer in the world.

12. Toyota leads the world in the production of hybrid vehicles, with well over 1.5 million vehicles on the road today.

13. Toyota’s daily budget for research and development operations worldwide is over $20 million a day.

14. Toyota is the 12^th largest corporation on the planet when ranked by revenue.

15. Toyota was the first automaker to produce more than 10 million vehicles in a single year, achieving that mark in 2013.

16. There are over 100 different Toyota-produced vehicles sold in different markets around the world.

17. The Toyota Corolla has been through 12 different generations in its production run. With over 30 million vehicles on the road, it is the single best-selling nameplate in automotive history.

18. Toyota manufactures and sells a Corolla every 27 seconds.

19. Since 1991, Toyota has donated over half a billion dollars in grants, donations, and community development programs.

20. Toyota holds over 1,000 global patents.

21. Toyota developed a “Pure Price” technique to make purchasing a Scion a transparent and simple transaction.

22. Scion vehicles do not have traditional trim levels, but rather begin as a standard model to which each buyer can add features that they desire.

 

Image via Flickr by Daniel under use of CC BY 2.0

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