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Toyota investing $200M in Southern manufacturing

Over the past two years, Toyota has invested more than $2 billion at its North American production facilities, and it apparently doesn't plan on stopping there. To keep up with recent strong sales, Toyota is investing an additional $200 million at its engine plants in the Southern US to increase production capacity of its V6 engines.
The bulk of this money ($150 million) will go to expand Toyota's engine plant in Huntsville, AL, which is currently responsible for supplying engines - four-cylinder, V6 and V8 - to eight of Toyota's 12 domestically produced vehicles. That includes the best-selling Toyota Camry (shown above).
Toyota didn't say exactly what improvements are being made to the plant, but this follows last year's $80 million investment in the plant that is set to be completed by next year raising the engine capacity to 750,000 annual units including 362,000 V6s. The remaining $50 million will go to the casting plants of Toyota-owned Bodine Aluminum in Missouri and Tennessee, which supply engine blocks and cylinder heads to the Huntsville engine plant as well as others in Kentucky and West Virginia. Scroll down below for the official press release.

Lexus GX, Toyota Land Cruiser Prado facelifts leaked

The Lexus GX and the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, which isn't sold in the US, have gone without visual updates since the current generation was launched in 2009. But what appear to be patent filing sketches and pictures of the sibling sports utility vehicles' mid-cycle updates have been leaked on a Russian Land Cruiser Club forum.
Major changes to the GX's front end will be made to incorporate Lexus' signature grille. Gone are the awkwardly shaped headlamps and the soft-looking triple-slat grille. The sketch shows the Lexus with a new bumper, lower-profile headlights and a more aggressive, angular grille with one more slat and a gaping lower air-intake opening. The vehicle's profile looks unchanged, but the rear bumper will be reshaped slightly to fit new, better-integrated horizontal reflectors.
The Toyota gets a handful of styling updates as well, including a new front bumper with higher-profile headlamps that look a bit out of place to us. The Prado's profile also looks unchanged, but the rear end gets restyled taillights and a reshaped license-plate enclosure.

Vote to unionize Toyota Canada plant faces delay

Volkswagen isn't the only automaker with high-profile unionization efforts afoot at one of its North American factories. Unifor, Canada's largest private-sector union, is attempting to organize Toyota's factories in Ontario, reports Reuters. A vote was originally set for next week, but Unifor has apparently found more workers eligible to vote, delaying the proceedings. It hasn't rescheduled the ballot yet, but claims there are 7,500 employees with the right to vote, with over 3,000 having already signed union cards.
Toyota is pushing against organizing, saying that workers already have a payment and benefits near the top of the industry, and noting that it has never laid off a permanent employee in Canada. Unifor has reportedly countered by saying that about a quarter of the workforce is operating under a temporary contract, which receives lower benefits.
The automaker has three factories in Ontario - two in Cambridge and one in Woodstock. To form a union, a majority of eligible employees must vote to join Unifor. If successful, they would be the first wholly owned Toyota plants in North America to be organized. Previous attempts to unionize the Japanese automaker's Canadian factories in 2001 and 2008 failed due to lack of support.