Industrial History | Toyota — The Koromo Plant on the Old Silk Town

People treat Toyota as a company that was always named Toyota and always built cars in a city of that name.

Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. was registered on 28 August 1937. The first dedicated plant was finished here, at Maeyama 8, Shimoichiba, Koromo-cho, Nishikamo-gun, Aichi — the ground now numbered 1 Toyota-cho, Toyota City. The completion ceremony was held on 3 November 1938. The company later took that date as its founding day even though the legal registration was a year earlier.

The automotive work had started inside Toyoda Automatic Loom Works at Kariya in 1933, under Kiichiro Toyoda. The Model AA and the G1 truck were already on the road before Koromo opened. The new plant was built on land a silk town offered after the Depression killed the mills. Risaburo Toyoda was president; Kiichiro was vice-president. Just-in-time production was tried on this floor from the first months.

Koromo was renamed Toyota City in 1959 after the factory, not the other way round. The Honsha Plant still sits on that plot. The loom works at Kariya and the later Nagoya and Tokyo offices are other chapters. The first mass-production car plant was a new shed on former mulberry ground, not a city that already carried the brand.