A new Corolla Hybrid parked where the Toyota plant once was.Courtesy of manufacturer
There’s really nothing here now. I parked the Toyota Corolla Hybrid on the empty plot of industrial land in Sydney, N.S., and tried to imagine how it had been 60 years ago. That was back when the place was about to start bustling.
There’d been a naval yard then, soon to close, and the newly formed Canadian Motor Industries (CMI) company would move into its buildings to start a new joint venture. The site on the east coast of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island would become the first assembly plant for Japanese cars in North America, though the company was entirely Canadian.
“Unlike other firms producing cars in this country, Canadian Motor Industries Ltd. will not be bound by close ties to a parent firm based outside Canada,” declared its president, D.W. Samuel. “The motivation is inspired by Canadian needs, Canadian hopes and the best interests of Canada.”
There was, of course, a side hustle. CMI investor Peter Munk, who had become newly successful as co-founder of the Clairtone hi-fi company and who would go on to establish Barrick Gold Corp., knew the Auto Pact trade agreement between Canada and the United States was coming the following January. The Automotive Products Agreement – to use its more formal title – was intended to better integrate the auto industries of the two countries and reduce the trade deficit. However, only companies already assembling cars in Canada could be members of the pact and benefit from duty-free imports and exports. In 1964, those included Studebaker in Hamilton and Volvo in Halifax. CMI wanted a similar deal.
Toyota Canada’s current corporate secretary, Stephen Beatty, says CMI originally considered a deal with struggling Studebaker, which was desperate for innovation and investment. Studebaker had already begun talking with Isuzu and Toyota in Japan, introduced by its American lawyer, future U.S. president Richard Nixon, but the negotiations collapsed and so CMI stepped in to talk to the Japanese directly. Of the more than 400,000 cars built in Japan in 1963, with a growing reputation for quality and durability, only 155 had been sold in Canada, with sales squeezed by high tariffs.
Toyota Corollas being assembled at the Point Edward plant.Courtesy of manufacturer
Samuel was the former managing director of Volvo’s small Canadian assembly operation, and Munk and CMI’s other 10 investors were well connected. The Canadian government was persuaded to bolster the pact by offering “duty-remission” incentives to Japanese companies that allowed tax breaks for importing vehicles from Japan provided they also assembled some vehicles in Canada, while those domestically built vehicles could, in turn, be exported to the United States.
The new plant was built on land leased from the Nova Scotia government at the Point Edward naval base, just north of Sydney. Generous incentives brought the company to the province, and it was seen as a convenient port for reaching America’s eastern seaboard and the Caribbean.
It’s all gone now. A metal fabrication plant to one side; a propane filling plant off to the south; a trucking company a block away. The land is now part of a larger parcel owned by a ship-dismantling company based in Ontario.
The government dredged the harbour and filled in the land for its docks, says Donald Sives, the owner of S&M Trucking, who owned the land in the interim. “They’ve talked about a container port, but you know how this stuff happens. Unless the federal government gives you $20-billion, what are you going to do?”
The first Japanese car to be assembled at the site – the first in North America – was the Isuzu Bellett in 1968, a small sedan that was considered kind of sexy for its time. It was followed the next year by the Toyota Corolla 1100, both assembled from parts shipped from Japan. The plant was not efficient – it could produce only one vehicle a day. Within three years, that had increased to 10 vehicles a day. Meanwhile, CMI imported the little Toyota 700, the Crown and the Corona by the shipload into Vancouver. In 1971, Toyota was the first import brand to sell 50,000 units a year in Canada.
A production worker assembles a car.Courtesy of manufacturer
The assembly plant stayed in business until 1975, after building more than 9,000 Corollas. Sives said local people believe that CMI left because it wanted to avoid imminent unionization, but Toyota Canada’s Beatty denies this, saying there were many more factors at play. Nova Scotia’s location had certainly not been kind to Munk’s Clairtone business, which was lured from Toronto in 1966 by provincial incentives to assemble its hi-fi equipment in Stellarton, near New Glasgow. A year of spiralling losses only ended for Munk and his business partner David Gilmour when they surrendered control of Clairtone to the province. Production was hampered by poor roads, a lack of infrastructure and a relatively small, untrained workforce.
Toyota went on to build assembly plants in the United States and in 1980, CMI was transformed into Toyota Canada Inc. It opened its first plant in Cambridge, Ont. in 1988, and it now produces a vehicle every minute. More than half-a-million vehicles were built at its three Ontario plants last year, but it all started here, on this vacant piece of land, where my Corolla Hybrid test car was parked alone for its photograph to be taken. When I drove away to meet with Sives, I splashed through a deep puddle, washing the mud from its wheels.
“It’s a changing world, eh?” said Sives, standing outside his office. No traffic passed on the site’s roads, and few people seemed to be around. “That was a long time ago, but it would be great to see today, this whole area with a great big new car factory, wouldn’t it? Yes, that would be a great thing to see.”
In 1968, the Isuzu Bellett was the first Japanese car built in North America.Courtesy of manufacturer
The writer was a guest of the automaker. Content was not subject to approval.