Toyota Corolla Cross - Mazda Toyota Manufacturing in Huntsville, Alabama

Today marks a milestone for the Mazda Toyota partnership as their joint venture factory in Huntsville, Alabama released the first production model of the Toyota Corolla Cross.

The Corolla Cross is an entirely new model for Toyota as they try to figure out their place in the Compact Utility Vehicle, CUV, segment. 

Mazda Toyota factory is a state of the art autombile manufacturing facility, which was opened last year. In addition to the Toyota Corolla Cross, this facility will be producing several other toyota SUVs as well as Mazda SUVs in the future. For Mazda this is a giant leap as this will be their first own production facility in the U.S. 

In the late 90s and early 2000's Mazda partnered with Ford to scale up their production. The Mazda 3 which was first introduced as part of this partnership became a huge success. However this partnership also brought in many of the reliability issues often associated with Ford. Finally in 2010 Mazda ended the partnership with Ford and relied on their own factories and resources to introduce many new exciting cars including the Cx5, new mazda 3 and Mazda 6 to name a few. Overall past 10 years have been a great decade for Mazda nit only in the U.S but also internationally. 

Partnership with Toyota should make Mazda stronger as they can adapt some of Toyota's world renowned production processes. Also for Toyota this would be a great opportunity to add more driving excitement to their vehicles by adapating Mazda's "Driving Matters" concept.

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