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Toyota Adding Shift to Increases Yaris Production for European Market

With all the new B-segment hatchbacks launched in the past year, you'd think the Toyota Yaris has no chance of success. And yet its reputation for reliability seems to have resulted in increased demand from European customers. Today, the Japanese automaker announced that it is over capacity and needs to add another work shift in at the French factory that makes the car.
2014 Toyota Yaris Hybrid 1 photo
Photo: Toyota
A 15% rise in production to 220,000 vehicles is expected for 2014, meeting high demand for its two products, the Toyota Yaris and the Toyota Yaris Hybrid.

A third shift will be added as of this summer, after 500 new employees will be trained by Toyota Motor Manufacturing France (TMMF) in Valenciennes, adding to the existing 4,000. Toyota says that until the third shift is in place, some Saturday production is planned to meet the demand.

“Sales forecasts have led us to increase production plans by around 15 per cent for 2014, for a total annual production volume of around 220,000 units,” confirmed Koreatsu Aoki, President of TMMF.

We have a sneaking suspicion there's something Toyota did not tell us in today's official press statement. Last year Yaris sales in Europe, only amounted to 175,809, about 50,000 of those being the hybrids. A 25% increase in sales seems absurd until you realize that a comprehensive update for the car is secretly being prepared. These are not baseless rumors, since we actually have a video of a heavily camouflaged Yaris prototype undergoing testing late last year. The only question is: when is it going to come out – Geneva or in Paris?

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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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