Toyota has been using a megaprensa for 90 years to make cars. They have transported half planet to continue using it

In 2024 About 92 million vehicles were manufactured worldwide. Plants like him Hyundai Ulsan Colossus Manufacture one every ten seconds Thanks to a tremendously specific machinery. One of the machines that are used are prey, Monsters such as Tesla Gigapress that allow to shape the metal in a few seconds, but despite innovations, Toyota has a press that has been working as the first day and resist to leave.

In fact, it is older than the car company itself, when Toyota was nothing more than a loom manufacturer.

The Komatsu press. Now, Toyota is not only one of the Industry powersbut an example of reliability and one of the most manufactured cars. It is one of Japan’s economic engines, but a century ago, things were very different.

In the 1920s, Toyoda (it was named for the surname of its founder, Sakichi Toyoda) It was a company that manufactured looms. Curiously, Keep being. Toyoda Automatic Loom, from 1924, was considered the most advanced loom in the world and the company saw that it should not be so different from an engine, so they got to work.

They created their first engine, also their first car and, to accelerate production, acquired a huge 700 -ton press manufactured by Komatsu. This purchase was made in 1934, when Toyota was already in the car business, but three years before the formal foundation of Toyota Motor Corporation in 1937. With its 700 tons of strength, it could work with large body panels, shaping the metal sheets with ease, and it was the one that helped boost the business during the first years in the first years in the first years in the first years in the first years in the first years in the first years in HONshus plantto.

The flag in the Sao Bernardo plant

Travel. Masahiro Inoue, CEO of Toyota for Latin America and the Caribbean, highlighted That it was incredible that a Japanese company acquired such a large team before the war, since it had to be “incredibly expensive.” According to Inoue, they were able to face the purchase thanks to the money obtained by the sale of Patents from the Automatic Loom to a British company. During five years, the Komatsu press gave life to some of Toyota’s most iconic cars, but in 1962, they decided to open their first floor outside Japan.

Located in Sao Bernardo, the factory needed specialized machinery for the local Variant of Land Cruiser, and decided that the Komatsu press should be installed on that new plant. After a very complicated logistics due to its dimensions and weight to move it to Brazil, for 39 years, the already veteran press proved to be vital for the construction of the Toyota Banderiant. After the end of the production of the SUV in 2001, he continued in service stamping pieces both for the Corolla as for the Hilux.

Back home. In November 2023, the Sao Bernardo plant closed, but that did not mean the death of the veteran press. Toyota was, and it is still a machine factory, and I don’t know whether for adherence to the press or for something merely practical, They announced that he would return to Japan. In fact, as we read in Toyota TimesThey affirmed that he would have his own tribute because his new destination would be exactly the place he occupied in the Honsha plant during those years in which he helped to shape both cars and the company itself.

President Akio Toyoda approved that “functional conservation” of the machine, because it will not be a mere museum piece: it will serve both for use in the manufacture of spare parts and to train the new factory employees.

An icon. For 90 years, the Komatsu press has been key in the development of Toyota both for what it helped to forge and for representing that first large deployment of the company outside its borders. At this point, it is part of the spirit of the company, but also a sample of how, for certain such specific tasks, the passage of time and the creation of new machinery has not been able to take this pillar of the automotive ahead.

Now, as Inoue commented, it was sure to be “greatly expensive”, but after 90 years, the investment is well amortized.

Images | Toyota

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