Toyota Said Mexico May Be Home To A New Assembly Plant.

Toyota Motor Corp. plans to select a site for its fifth North American assembly plant, with Mexico a leading contender to host the facility, a company official said. "We are looking at Mexico as a very good potential market," Yoshi Inaba, chief executive of Torrance, California-based Toyota Motor Sales USA said, according to a Reuters news report.

"Certainly Mexico has proven to be a good production site. It's high on the list of locations...but Mexico isn't the only place we will be looking at." Mexico has become attractive because of its participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada, Inaba said.

Toyota already has plants in Cambridge, Ontario; Georgetown, Kentucky; Princeton, Indiana and one in Fremont, California. Newspapers in Japan have reported that Toyota management has already settled on Mexico for the production facility although the company has repeatedly said no decision has been made on where to locate the plant, expected to begin producing Tacoma pick-up trucks by 2004.

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