Lexus: Made in America
Lexus: Made in America. That’s probably something you’re not used to hearing, but as of today — thanks to the ES 350 rolling off the assembly line in Georgetown, Kentucky — it’s true.
The Georgetown plant, the very first wholly owned Toyota manufacturing plant in North America, is where workers have been busy building the best-selling Camry since Lexus was just two years old. Now they are the first North American plant to build a Lexus.
Two and a half short years after it was first announced that the ES 350 would be made in America, the Georgetown team is now cranking out high-quality, luxury Lexi. To accomplish such a feat, Lexus invested over 360 million dollars, hired over 750 people, and created a whole new plant with new operations for assembly, quality, paint, stamping, and plastics.
And they also had to figure out how to make the thing.
“One of the first things we did was purchase 22 brand-new ES 350s from a local dealer. We brought them in-house, and repeatedly tore them down into 2,000 pieces and built them back up. We learned every facet of this vehicle; how to put it together the right way,” says Mike Bridge, assembly manager for the plant’s Lexus line. And after 1.5 million combined training hours, they’ve apparently done just that.
You can hear plenty more about the big accomplishment from more plant representatives in the video below.
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Via [Toyota]
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