Japan’s Automobile Manufacturers: A New American Dynamic
[November 2003]

This is an exciting time to work in the automobile industry.

Technologies that once seemed only fantasy today promise real solutions to some of our most vexing transportation problems. How can we sustain our economic growth, maintain our personal mobility and still save energy and protect the environment? How can we build cars that are more fuel efficient, less polluting and safer for both occupants and pedestrians? Can "eco cars" be "performance" cars? Can they be affordable?

The people and companies of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) are proud of the answers we already have rolling on the road. The Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight are proof that hybrid gasoline-electric power is both practical and popular. We are producing vehicles with anti-collision braking. We make low-emission, natural-gas trucks, and we make sports cars with innovative engine technology. It doesn’t stop there. Looking to the future, our companies are developing a new generation of fuel-cell cars that promise even greater achievements in environmentally clean and fuel-efficient transportation.

Is this all happening in Japan? Actually most of our cars sold in America are made here. We have 32 research and development centers in the U.S., 20 manufacturing plants and 7,123 dealer franchises. Nearly 400,000 Americans design, build and sell our products in this country. Moreover, we set another new record in U.S. parts purchases in 2002, spending more than $37 billion on parts made in the U.S.

We are more than just commercially woven into American life; we enthusiastically embrace the values that define it. Many of our employees are reservists who answered their country’s call to serve in times of crisis. And all of our facilities in America strive, in their own ways, to be stalwarts of good citizenship. A recent example was the effort by employees of one of our companies’ manufacturing plants in Normal, Illinois, who made sure military families had food, gas and telephone cards while their breadwinners were away. Another is the company that reported it was able to recycle more than 99% of the discarded scrap metal, paint solvents and other waste it generated in the U.S. last year. Countless other examples take place quietly every day as our people, outside of work, volunteer in their children’s schools, coach Little League teams and work to make their neighborhoods safer, cleaner and more supportive.

JAMA companies make American cars with American workers in American communities. We are blazing technological frontiers American consumers want, while expanding choices and holding down prices. We are proud to continue to set the bar for quality while improving the environment, adding jobs and supporting the American communities we call home. This brochure is offered as a guide to our daily, domestic manufacture of excitement, opportunity and promise.