Magnolia Marketplace

Mississippi’s automotive industry has had quite a bit of news recently. Toyota is still navigating the recall mess, and Nissan just affirmed plans to start producing light commercial vehicles at its facility in Canton, starting this fall.

Those two topics — and the future of Toyota’s Blue Springs facility — will likely be front and center April 16 at the Mississippi College School of Law in Downtown Jackson. The school will hold an automotive symposium from 1:30-3:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Student Center.

Some familiar names and faces are scheduled to appear. They include Gov. Haley Barbour; David Copenhaver, vice president of Toyota Manufacturing, Mississippi; Jim Barksdale; Paul Johnson, director of the Toyota project at the Mississippi Development Authority; and Mississippi Economic Council President Blake Wilson.

J. Larry Lee, professor of law at MC, will moderate the event.

According to a press release from the school, the symposium and its participants will “assess the risks and opportunities that will define the future of the automotive industry,” a sector government and economic development officials hope will be a significant part of the Mississippi’s economy moving forward.

Mark your calendar. It’s pretty rare to get a group like this in the same room, so there should be some pretty interesting conversation.

Toyota announced today that it will idle two of its manufacturing facilities — one in Texas, the other in Kentucky — as the fallout from the recalls spreads. The plant in Texas, which makes the Tundra truck, will shut down for one week in March and one week in April. The facility in Kentucky, where Toyota builds the Camry and Avalon sedans and the Venza crossover, will idle Feb. 26 and possibly two or three more days in March or April,a spokesman told the Associated Press.

That doesn’t make much of an impact here in Mississippi, but I have a story in this week’s edition of the MBJ that takes a look at how the recalls — which added the Prius about 10 days ago — might affect the Blue Springs plant, which supposedly will build the Prius, though nobody really knows when production will start. Be sure to check it out.

Anyway, there remain a few notes from that story that didn’t really fit with the overall theme of the final draft, but are still worth mentioning:

Michelle Krebs, senior analyst at Edmunds.com, had an interesting take on how Toyota is handling the public relations boondoggle the recalls have created. A lot of folks have said that Toyota was slow to react, and when it did, did not do that great a job. That may be due to a couple things, Krebs said. The first is that there apparently was no established blueprint  to start putting out the fires immediately after they started. Krebs’ second theory goes to the Japanese culture.

“I would think that any major corporation of any sort would have a crisis management plan ready to enact at any moment,” she said. “You would think they would practice some of these scenarios. I think it’s definitely a lack of experience. If you look at the Japanese culture, the companies are revered. They don’t have a lot of lawyers. They don’t have the scrutiny of the media like we do here. And frankly, I think Toyota got arrogant and got complacent.”

Mark Ragsdale, a former dealership owner who now serves as a consultant to the automotive industry, said Toyota put too much of the PR burden on its dealers, which runs counter to the reputation it has enjoyed among its individual franchises.

“Toyota always is in the top two or three in dealer-relations surveys,” Ragsdale said. “But automakers are their own breed of cat. They’re not real big on taking responsibility. The automakers use dealers as human shields to get in front of the customer and handle things, but dealers don’t always have the tools to do that.”

Toyota announced late last night it is recalling 133,000 2010 Prius hybrids to fix problems associated with the antilock braking system software. Also included in the recall are 14,500 2010 Lexus HS 250h models.

Toyota said in a press release that some Prius and 250h owners have experienced “inconsistent brake feel during slow and steady application of brakes on rough or slick road surfaces when the ABS is activated in an effort to maintain tire traction.”

Obviously, the Prius is near and dear to the heart of Mississippi’s business community, with the facility in Blue Springs on tap to eventually build the vehicle. Magnolia Marketplace is working on a story for next week’s MBJ about how the recall mess will (or won’t) affect the goings-on in North Mississippi. Look for it.

UPDATED AT 10 A.M.: Meant to include a link to the Toyota press release, which is here.

So the Saints won the Super Bowl, Drew Brees won the game’s MVP, and according to various national media outlets, poverty, corruption and every other scourge on New Orleans is gone forever, or at least that’s what the hours of pregame coverage yesterday seemed to imply. And if there is anybody north of Memphis who is aware that Hurricane Katrina did her worst damage in Mississippi, I’d like to meet that person.

Moving on.

Toyota announced yesterday that it will unveil its plan of action for dealing with the problems that have arisen with the Prius’ antilock braking system. This is the latest blow in the wave of recalls to hit the company the past couple of weeks.

We have a message in to the Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America folks in an effort to get a few details on when they’ll make the announcement, and what exactly it will entail.

When we hear back from them, we’ll post what they have to say.

UPDATED AT 10:52 A.M.: Still no word from the stateside Toyota folks, but Kyodo News in Japan is reporting that about 300,000 Prius hybrids will be recalled. Details are here.

UPDATED AGAIN AT 12:53 P.M.: Magnolia Marketplace just heard from Mike Michels, spokesman for Toyota Motor Sales USA. He did not provide a timetable for when Toyota would issue its Prius solution, saying only that it would be “early this week. Otherwise, there’s nothing to report,” he said.

We just got off the phone with Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America Spokeswoman Barbara McDaniel. Here’s the full transcript of our brief conversation.

Magnolia Marketplace: “Has anything become official with the Prius recall?”

McDaniel: “No, there’s nothing official. We’re still investigating.”

Magnolia Marketplace: “I’m contractually obligated to ask this question, but will this have any effect on the Blue Springs facility?”

McDaniel: “No.”

So there you have it. Gov. Haley Barbour is holding a press conference at 11 a.m. to announce yet another round of budget cuts, but we’ll try to sneak in a question about Toyota and see what he thinks.

UPDATED AT 9:36 A.M.: Barbour’s office has just issued a press release announcing the press conference at 11 has been canceled so Barbour can “continue to analyze budget options.”

Toyota, which supposedly will build its hybrid Prius at some point in Blue Springs, has not had the greatest month.

Seven of the company’s models, totaling more than 5 million vehicles, have been recalled the past two weeks because of issues with accelerators sticking.

Now comes news from Japan — where it’s already Friday so the daily newspapers have hit the Web and the streets — that the company is expected to recall the 2010 Prius because of problems with the car’s antilock braking system. The Nikkei, the Japanese version of the Wall Street Journal, reports that the Japanese Transport Ministry has yet to receive notice of a formal recall, which would have to happen before anything became official. There have been a total of only 180 complaints in the U.S. and Japan associated with the Prius’s brakes, but the falloutf rom the first round of recalls has probably magnified the issue somewhat.

We’ll have reaction from statesode Toyota folks first thing in the morning.

Just before Christmas, Magnolia Marketplace made a few predictions for 2010 (read them here) and one of them was that Ole Miss QB Jevan Snead would throw at least one interception in the Cotton Bowl.

Just call us Nostradamus Marketplace.

Anyway, the first workday of 2010 has a chance to prove another of our predictions true, although it is a small chance.

Gov. Haley Barbour is set to make a “major economic development announcement” this afternoon at 4, according to a press release from his office.

Two things jump to mind immediately: One is Toyota and the other is a steel pipe manufacturer that wants to build a facility in Tunica. Based on what Magnolia Marketplace has heard the past couple months, we would be suprised — but not at all shocked — if Toyota announced before March or April that the Blue Springs plant was moving forward. That’s not to say definitively that today’s news from Barbour won’t be Toyota-centric, but it would be a mild upset if it was.

There is a decent chance Barbour will tell everybody that the German manufacturer of steel pipes has resolved the financing issue that has held up the Legislature passing an incentive package. Barbour had planned to call a special session in late October to do so, but that has been delayed while the company got its financial ducks in a row.

It could be either of those two things, or it could be neither of those two things. As soon as we know, we’ll spread the word.

UPDATED AT 10:15 A.M. : Toyota spokeswoman Barbara McDaniel just emailed to say that today’s announcement will have nothing to do with Toyota. “It’s not us,” McDaniel wrote.

So there you have it.