Lemon Law for California

In the wake of America’s mass exodus from large trucks and SUVs, Toyota is considering shifting production of its efficient Camry to its Indiana truck plant. Toyota sold 51,291 Camrys last month while Tundra sales slipped 31.5 percent.

The future of the Indiana plant — which produces the Toyota Tundra pickup, Sequoia SUV and Sienna minivan — has been up in the air for several months now. Earlier reports suggest that Toyota would move Tundra production exclusively to its new plant in San Antonio, Texas, with the latest reports indicating Toyota would export vehicles made at its Indiana plant.

The move to produce Camrys at its truck plant would seem to be a smart one for Toyota. Not only would it allowed Toyota to maximize its production capacity, but it would give the Japanese automaker a third U.S. Camry plant at a time when demand for fuel-efficient vehicles is on the rise. We’re pretty sure workers at the Princeton, Indiana plant would also be in favor of Camry production rather than a pink slip.

Toyota has yet to officially confirm the report, but did tell Automotive News that it is “looking at a lot of things to balance production.”

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The Detroit three aren’t the only ones desperately trying to cut costs in their operations, as today’s reports have German luxury car maker BMW struggling to reach its 500 million euros (over $766 million) savings goal by the end of 2009. As part of the plan, BMW aims to lay off some 8,100 employees in 2008, but thus far, company sources say the automaker has managed to cut well over 1,000 jobs.

“We said early on that these (job cut) figures can’t be reached,” said union and BMW’s supervisory board member Werner Neugebauer, as per an Automotive News report, citing German daily Handelsblatt. According to the paper, the majority of the company’s 5,000 temporary workers were laid off, but union sources say only a few hundred full-time employees have signed voluntary termination agreements. The automaker’s agreement with its union prevents compulsory job terminations until 2013.

The automaker is also suffering from the rising cost of raw materials such as steel and the weak U.S. dollar versus the euro conversion, as it recently announced it will raise U.S. vehicle prices by 1 percent.

In related news, Chrysler yesterday said it would cut 5 percent of all its non-production related contracts.

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[ To Learn more our services and areas of practice, please visit our website at www.LemonLawIntel.com ]