Toyota Picks Indiana For New Truck Factory

Toyota Motor Corp. on Thursday picked the corn fields of southwest Indiana as the home for its first U.S. pickup truck plant.

The $700 million plant, to open in 1998, will employ at least 1,300 workers in an area hit hard by the declining coal industry.

Toyota President Hiroshi Okuda, who visited the 1,100-acre site Thursday, said Japan’s largest automaker selected Indiana because it found “traditional values of hard work and excellence” in this community about 30 miles north of Evansville.

Toyota also had considered sites in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and other states.