Canadian Automotive Manufacturing

Podcast Episode: 0221
Canada does build cars

    How many automotive products does Canada make?  You will be shocked at what products have come out of Canadian manufacturing sites along with how many we have had over the years.  Follow us as we take a look at where Canada manufactures products for the automotive marketplace.

​     You know, I never really noticed or even understood it until I actually went to college for my automotive product design course. I always knew Canada was pretty high up in automotive production, but I never knew how many vehicles and to what extent our involvement in the automobile industry was. I knew about cars from all over the world and I knew the models and the companies behind them, but until I went away to college, I never understood the complexity of the Canadian automotive marketplace. I'm not talking about the sales of automobiles. I'm talking about the manufacturing automotive marketplace the cars that are made here, the parts that are made here and the companies that come from Canada. Understanding how much we actually give to the world and have created for the world is something that's more mind-blowing than you could really think of. Canada's involvement in the automotive revolution of the world was here. We may not have our own car companies to showcase what we have done, but we actually have in the past and, even though none of them exist today, we're still moving forward and producing some of the biggest names and products that you could think of.
 
     Today. AutoLooks is going to be taking a look at Canadian manufacturing. Welcome back to the AutoLooks Podcast. I am your host, as always, the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr. Everett Jay, coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net. If you haven't been there, stop by, check it out, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings and stop by the Corporate Links website page. Big or small, we have them all Car companies from around the globe, including a lot that we're going to be talking about in today's podcast, all on the Canadian tab of the Corporate Links website page on the AutoLooks.net website. The AutoLooks podcast, is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net and don't forget to click the like button at the bottom to hear more from the AutoLooks and AutoLooks.net podcast. 

​     Like I said in the beginning, Canadian manufacturing we all know about the global behemoths which are Germany, Great Britain, Japan, China and America. Yes, these are all main manufacturing hubs which own some of the world's biggest car companies out there, and even though my home country of Canada doesn't have any of these big players, we still are a big part of it Back in 2001, when I was going through my automotive products design course. At that point in time, one out of every six Ontario jobs was tied to the automotive industry and one out of every eight Canadian jobs was tied to the automotive industry. Now, being that our country just surpassed 30 million people, that doesn't seem like a lot, but when you consider it in a standpoint compared to other manufacturing hubs around the globe, our population base to what we were creating made us number three in the world automotive production. Hell, at one point in time, all the way back to the 1940s, Canada was number two for automotive production in the world at a time when our country hardly had 12 million people. New York City had pretty much more people in it than Canada did at that point in time. And yet we still produce more vehicles and more parts for everyone around the world.
 
     But there's a good reason for that. Canada was still part of the British Commonwealth, which means if you wanted to sell in to any of the British Commonwealth countries which means Hong Kong, i.e. entry level into China, India, south Africa, Australia and, as usual, Great Britain If you wanted to sell into any of those industrialized nations and sell vehicles into them, building them in one of the Commonwealth countries made it so you could circumnavigate around any high tariffs. Well, Canada was still part of that Commonwealth and remember we didn't drop out of the Commonwealth race until the 1980s. Even today we still have the Governor General, which essentially goes back to the royal family, for asking if something's okay when we pass big laws that change our country. We're in charge of a lot of stuff in our own home country, but we still have to go to the Commonwealth for a few other things, pretty much things from our past that they created and we need to gain a handle on.
 
     So, for our sales into those Commonwealth nations, Canada was right next door to the world's largest automotive producing nation in the early 20th century. So, the US wanted to sell cars into Great Britain, where it was a lot easier to get into than producing them in, say, France, Spain or Germany or, hell, even Italy. It was easier to do it in a Commonwealth nation, ship them over, because Great Britain had a lot of ties in with the European Union at that point in time, which means they had a lot less tariff barriers than the Americans had, compared to a lot of those countries at that point in time. Canada was it, and to manufacture products in our country it was like a loophole to sell them and all those other commonwealth nations, and because of this, Canada’s automotive industry took off. Even though the Americans were buying out a lot of our main car companies and considering the fact that we didn't have a population to sustain a major automotive manufacturer, we were falling behind with our own car companies. But whereas though those companies had gotten out of building horse and buggies or carriages, like McLaughlin Motors, and started moving into the automotive industry and forming alliances with American car companies for parts and pieces to manufacture them in our home nation and supply them to Commonwealth nations, Canada was moving up the food chain. We couldn't supply our own nation with our own car company and be viable, but hell, we could build them here for other car companies and sell them around the world. 

    In 1904, in Walkersville, Ontario, ford set up their very first manufacturing facility in Canada. 1904, okay, this is not too long after Ford became a car company. The Ford CS was produced in Canada because Henry Ford wanted to gain a foothold into the British marketplace and, with family and friends from Canada and spending time outside of Kingston Ontario, he already knew the country he was producing in. He was kind of giving back to people who helped him in his life. He came up here to spend time with family at their camp and with that he grew an association with Canada, kind of like his association from his dad to Ireland. His association with Canada made it so that if he wanted to sell into the British nations, he needed to build cars here. Walkersville, Ontario, became the site of the very first American manufactured products.
 
     Now Canadian cars have been around since the late 1800s and the internal combustion engine building themselves out of carriage manufacturers in Montreal of all places. Because if you go back to before the 20th century, in the 19th century Montreal was the city for the country of Canada. Even though the British had won the war against France, Montreal was still the biggest in the stranglehold for essentially the Canadian economy. So, with that a lot of ingenuity came out of it and learning about steam power, internal combustion engines and hell, even electric. The automobile industry started to come alive in Montreal. But, like we said, with a small population, supplying only to cities like Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa and even Toronto was hard. We had railroads and that was about it. Our road network was horrendous, so these small little buggy manufacturers couldn't cut it with our population base and the environment around them. So, a lot of these manufacturers started to disappear or they got into supplying other companies.
 
     Like we said earlier, one of the earliest car companies to ever form in Canada and stay alive for quite a few years was McLaughlin Motors Oshawa, Ontario. Originally founded in 1917, the motor division superseded the previous carriage division which started in 1897 by Robert McLaughlin. Robert McLaughlin was, let's just say, he knew what he was doing. At one point in time McLaughlin Carriage Works was the largest supplier of carriages and cutters, which is sleighs, so carriages and cutters. McLaughlin Carriage Manufacturing was the largest in the Commonwealth in the early 1900s. Yes, the largest, and it was from Canada.
 
     Well, Mr. Robert McLaughlin loved his carriages and when the automobile came around, he did not jump on that bandwagon. It was actually his son, Sam McLaughlin, who jumped on that bandwagon and after a trip to Jackson, Michigan, to pick up his Jackson automobile, he ran into another famous carriage manufacturer, somebody from the family of Dort Carriage Works. This was a man that was about to create one of the largest automotive corporations in the world, Mr. William C Durant of corporations in the world. Mr. William C Durant, he told Sam that he should try and get a Buick instead of his. Jackson convinced him into it and actually convinced him to go back to Toronto to pick up his Buick. With that he did. He picked it up and he loved it. From that day forward Sam McLaughlin knew where the world was going. His dad still saw carriages and cutters, but Sam saw the automobile industry and by 1917, he managed to get his own shop, to start building and working on his own automobile for the McLaughlin Motor Company. Now McLaughlin Motors would only last from 1917 until 1927 when they became part of General Motors of Canada and they became McLaughlin Buick became part of General Motors of Canada and then became McLaughlin Buick. Oshawa essentially became our homegrown Detroit.
 
    McLaughlin was one of the largest carriage manufacturers in the Commonwealth and one of the largest in North America. And McLaughlin Motors was one of the most prestigious automobiles the prestigious ever built in Canada and one of the tops in the Commonwealth. Hell. Charles and Diana both rode around in a McLaughlin that his own mother rode around in when she came here in the 1940s. He rode around it in the 80s when they came and if you watch the Royal Wedding with William and Kate, that was one of the vehicles they utilized the old McLaughlin from Canada.
 
    After their tour was done, Elizabeth took one of them home with her, and that McLaughlin is part of the. Their tour was done, Elizabeth took one of them home with her, and that McLaughlin is part of the Royal Carriage family, a Canadian car company that no longer exists. And why is that? Well, by 1953, McLaughlin had been fully consumed by General Motors of Canada, with the McLaughlin line disappearing towards the Buick franchise. And so, the Oshawa Automotive Hub was born in 1953, building General Motors, Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Acadian and Beaumont products for both the Canadian, American and British marketplaces, from Oshawa, Ontario, hell. Even the Camaro, Silverado, Sierra and Impala were made there. Yes, the Camaro. When the Challenger came back, it was built in Canada as well for a short time, when the Camaro, the Challenger and the Mustang were all kicking around in the teen years of the 2000s, the only one that wasn't made in Canada was the Mustang. 

      ​From Oshawa we move on to Saskatchewan. Of all places, Derby Motors, from 1924 to 1927, became the automotive company for the western provinces, supplying farmers with brand new vehicles and eventually moving into more agricultural products. Three short years Saskatchewan was the next place in the automobile industry in Canada, but from there we eventually moved next door to Detroit in Windsor Ontario. 1928 is when the automobile industry first took hold in Windsor Ontario. That was with the original Chrysler plant.
 
      Yes, Chrysler has an automotive production facility in Windsor Ontario the Ford Essex plant in 1981, the Windsor engine plant in 1978. They both have the Chrysler plant that was set up in 1928, along with Ford casting plants. And if you didn't know this, ford actually had a test track in Windsor Ontario which you can actually go for a jog on these days, still known as the Ford Test Track. You can find it in Windsor Ontario, both known as the Ford Test Track, dog Park, the Playground and Field 5. You can actually still go for a run around the original Ford testing facility for Canadian operations in Windsor Ontario. Kind of weird that they would build it directly across the river from their other test facility, but hey, they were bringing some jobs to the Canadian side of the border. The Chrysler plant that's been around since the 1920s both built Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth, Volkswagen, Valiant, Lancia and RAM brand products from it.
 
     And soon enough Stellantis is building their largest battery plant for the North American marketplace in Windsor Ontario as well. All thanks to a massive billions of dollars in subsidies supplied by our Canadian government. Supplied by our Canadian government. Or if you haven't heard any of our previous podcasts about our failure to get these minerals out of the ground for these battery plants, go back and take a listen and see how little the upstream has gotten compared to the downstream. It's a good listen to Canadian Critical Minerals. 

​     From there we move to Winnipeg, Ontario, back out west, but this is not for automobiles. Winnipeg, Ontario is known for New Flyer buses. Yes, new Flyer. If you've never heard of New Flyer buses, they build both city buses and coach buses and they originally started out in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1930. Manufacturing buses. Look at, oh my God. That's pretty amazing, considering the fact that this is our second entry into the Western area. You've got to remember Western Canada had people in it and had population based. Winnipeg was one of the largest cities out there for the longest time only because it was the central logistics hub for both the CN and CP lines across Canada. 

     Because essentially just outside of Winnipeg, Manitoba, is Steinbach Manitoba, which is the town that gets its name for being the center of Canada. When you're going east to west and I'm not an actual senator but when you're going east to west along the infrastructure, both highway and railway. Steinbach is the center of Canada. Funny thing is it's pretty close to where the center is. There's a Tim Hortons Kind of convenient huh. You can go get your coffee almost at the center of Canada. So, by building new flyer buses, that was a great idea. And if you didn't know this, Winnipeg was also one of the places that helped build transportation infrastructure in Canada, for the automobile industry as well, being one of the first places to introduce stop signs, signal lights and even using police forces to direct traffic. Hell, one of the first accidents recorded with a pedestrian happened in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Of all places where New Flyer Buses is from. 

     Moving out of the way from the western portion, we move back into the central hub of manufacturing for Canada, which is the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area, the GTHA. Running from the edge of Oshawa, Ontario, all the way around the Horseshoe to St Catharines, Ontario, heading as far north as Vaughan and Newmarket and as far southwest as Milton, Hamilton and Ancaster, Ontario. That is one conglomerate. That is where most of the manufacturing for Canada happens. So literally it's like taking out that area, you shut down manufacturing in this entire country. Why? Because our government constantly pours billions of dollars into that one central hub and nowhere else. Trust me, go look on a map and see how congested that area is to see what it's built.
 
      But because Southern Ontario is one of the main areas for agriculture, it grew quicker than anywhere else in the country and, being at the end of the St Lawrence Seaway, it's where people coming to our country unlike the United States who came in through Ellis Island and New York City most people in Canada came down the St Lawrence River and made their way to port cities of Montreal or York as it once originally was called, but is now Toronto, Ontario. And in Toronto you'll find companies like Ingus, who builds armored vehicles, Multimatic, who built the Ford GT and then they built it pretty damn close to where Deadmau5 lives. Orion Buses, Martineau International, which built car parts from Vaughan Ontario, Zenn Motor Company you remember the Zen Motor Company? They built an electric car a few years ago that wanted to take on the market and show us what we could build. It never really transpired, but hell it started. And in 1942, Toronto got its first foray into the automotive industry with the Etobicoke Casting Plant, now owned by Stellantis International. They're still utilizing the Etobicoke Casting Plant to build cast where they once built casting for products for both Windsor and then later Brampton, Ontario, which we'll get into at a later point.
 
      Moving around to the other side of this, people down there call golden horseshoe, but the rest of the country calls it you know the rust belt and basically a horseshoe has been shoved up someone's ass. In Hamilton, Ontario in 1947, Studebaker became the first American car company to build a full-scale automotive production facility in Canada for direct building of full-size vehicles and knockdown kits to be shipped over to the Commonwealth nations. We had done this before, but Studebaker was the first American company that built a dedicated, full-scale dedicated plant for this purpose in Hamilton Ontario. Plant for this purpose in Hamilton Ontario running from 1947 to the end of Studebaker in 1966. Studebaker built cars in Hamilton Ontario. This plant still exists but today, trust me, it does not build vehicles. 

     Now, due to the increase in automotive production in both Toronto and Hamilton, little towns just north of it called Newmarket Ontario was exploding in the 1950s. And the reason why it was exploding is because Newmarket Ontario was being built as what they called the $10 an hour town. In the 1950s $10 an hour was pretty good wages, but what were they? Building Parts for the automotive production facilities that were starting to gain a foothold in the other parts of the 401 belt. Now the 401 was Canada's second 400 series and third limited access highway. It was a belt that went from the border of Quebec, just outside Montreal, all the way to Windsor, Ontario, along the entire corridor of our manufacturing in not only Ontario but in Canada as a whole. Newmarket was just north of Toronto. Today it's now off of what is called the Highway 404. But in those days the 404 didn't exist. Newmarket was just a small town with direct access going down to the 401, because the 401 was actually at the edge of Toronto. In the 1950s there was no suburban hell like there is today. So, Newmarket was getting all these small little parts plants to build all these parts for the automotive industry, because by the 1950s American automobile industry was moving away from building all of their parts in-house and starting to subcontract manufacturing of parts like wipers, doors, door handles, you know glass to these smaller automotive part manufacturers. And Newmarket Ontario was taking that, essentially grabbing the reins and holding on and Newmarket would eventually spawn just south of it in the town of Aurora, one of the largest automotive part manufacturers in the world.
 
     1957, Magna International was created by Frank Stronach, an Austrian-born immigrant into Canada. He had come here to go to school for Tool and Die and he told his family when he left when I make it big, I'm going to buy a Cadillac and ship it home to my family. He did none other than that and after founding his company Magna International in Aurora, Ontario, which is essentially a small town between Toronto and Newmarket the $10 an hour town all these tools and die companies had hired him. He had learned his stuff and built his own company. Magna, years later, would go on to try and take Opel and Vauxhall from General Motors when they were selling them off. Unfortunately, both of them would go to the Peugeot Citroen conglomerate, eventually become Stellantis.
 
     But Magna International fought to get them and it was also fighting to gain the dealer network for Saturn in Canada and along with Penske Automotive, was trying to get Saturn both production facilities and dealer network for the entire North American sales. They wanted Saturn for one, both a production facility and its sales, to bring Opel and Vauxhall to North America. But General Motors didn't want this. They didn't want more competition and they especially didn't want competition from two companies that they once owned in their own backyard. So, they cut the deal with Magnet International at the very last minute, after Frank Stronach and both his son had gone out and bought over 400 acres north of Orillia, Ontario, to build a manufacturing plant to build automobiles.
 
      Today, both him and his son own farms outside of Massey, Ontario, in Temiskaming Shores, where they have cattle. The reason why they have cattle there is because it's a cooler climate and they get a lot less mosquitoes. Their cattle are for the leather that you find in the vehicles they manufacture, from Porsche to Fisker to Bentleys and Rolls Royce’s that Magna International built on the other side of the pond come from northern Ontario. Now you won't find any signs for this. My information comes from me, from farmers and people that I've known within these areas that have seen the paperwork go through the townships and who was buying it. Yes, the Stronach’s use northern Ontario cattle for hides in high-end cars. Do you remember that next time you're sitting in your Porsche Cayenne, built by Magna International, you're sitting on a cow that comes from an area within my neck of the woods? Pretty cool, huh? Basically, your ass is sitting in my grass. That came out wrong, but we'll just go with it from there. 

     Oakville, Ontario, ford decided to move into Canada to build vehicles and with that, ford built their Oakville assembly plant, building both Ford, Lincoln, Edsel and Mercury products along with their Canadian counterpart products. Next to this, the 50s was a growing time for the automobile industry in Canada. Down the road from Hamilton in St Catharines, Ontario, general Motors built their engine plant to supply both their American-made products and the Canadian-made products on literally the other side of the lake in Oshawa, Ontario, which, if you really think about it, why didn't they put the engine plant in a place like Pickering or, hell, even Kingston, Ontario, so it would be closer to both the American border and Oshawa and not have to travel through the rat's nest that is Toronto? I mean, it's horrible, horrible infrastructure. Yeah, trust me, we're going to get into the infrastructure of the Golden Horseshoe at a later point in time. 

​      From here we move into the 60s, and the 60s, you may think, was still a growing time for the automobile industry in Canada. We had Ford, we had Chrysler, we had Studebaker, we had General Motors. But out in Halifax, nova Scotia, the eastern seaboard in Canada, the main area where people first started coming into Canada, in Halifax, where you could find a graveyard of people from the Titanic, the RMS Titanic yeah, Volvo decided to build their first North American plant and from 1963 all the way up to 1998, over 30 years Volvo produced vehicles in Halifax, nova Scotia. Now, unfortunately, the eastern part of Canada is not as well versed as the rest of the country. Their infrastructure during those point in times, up until the mid 90s, was not the best. It was basically two-lane highways everywhere. So, unless you're shipping stuff out by rail or port, putting vehicles and trucks was just not it, and getting parts for these Volvos had to be shipped across from overseas or shipped up via rail, which means production always relied on a slower medium for transportation.
 
     Whereas building cars in the Golden Horseshoe you could build all your parts right around it, Nova Scotia never built the automobile industry up when it built Volvo cars, even though later on the Bricklin SV1 would be built across Bay of Fundy in St John, New Brunswick. That still wasn't enough to bring the automobile industry to the east coast of Canada. East Coast Canada has actually had many different car companies and even a racing car manufacturer from out in those stands, but has never managed to build a full-scale automobile industry inclusive of parts manufacturing. The reason why Volvo in 1998 decided to pull the carpet from underneath the door and pack it up and leave the North American marketplace. This is around the time that Ford Motor Company had bought them out and realized how much money Volvo was spending to produce cars in Nova Scotia. On top of that, ford just didn't see building cars out that far. You're too far away from everything. So unfortunately, the East Coast automobile industry, with both Halifax and St John and the Bricklin SV1 shuttering and its industry today being no. 

​     But the 60s were still a decent time for southern Ontario. Guelph, Ontario, welcomed Linamar, another massive conglomerate of automotive part production, to Canada, building parts for vehicles in and around the Golden Horseshoe. St Thomas, Ontario, welcomed in 1967, ford Production Facility. This production facility would go on to build the most famous taxi and police interceptor of all time, the Ford Grand Victoria and, hell, one of Ford's best muscle sedans of all time, the Mercury Marauder. St Thomas was it, but unfortunately, by 2011, when the full-frame platform world had just taken a hit and the Dodge Charger was moving in and stealing the Ford's place, ford packed it up, shut the plant down and literally leveled it to the ground. St Thomas is gone, but not forgotten, whereas in 2023, again with billions in subsidies, not millions, billions.
 
    With a B we're talking almost $8 billion, a billion dollars. Or, like I said my previous statement about electric battery and their lithium refinery in Northern Ontario, we've been asking for $20 million million dollars and the government's been dragging their feet for the past seven years. Volkswagen got almost $8 billion in subsidies to build a brand-new battery plant in St Thomas, Ontario, which I have actually gone out to say Volkswagen wants to save money at their home market and not have to lay people off. I think they should really just shutter this battery plant in St Thomas Ontario, save their money and reinvest it back into their home marketplace. It's not just me saying a big fuck you to Southern Ontario, but it's also me saying, hey, Volkswagen, pay attention to your home marketplace and save your people before you give it out to other people. I'm just trying to keep Volkswagen German here, okay.
 
       From the 60s we move into the 70s, and Bricklin was it in 1974 to 1975 with the SV1. But my home city also became a house for an automotive parts manufacturer Sudbury Brake Parts, or, as it was originally called, Neelon Castings, opened their doors for brake part manufacturing. It was a foundry to build rotors and pads for the automobile industry in Sudbury, Ontario, four hours north of Toronto, a city which still does not have a limited access throughway even though it's nearly 200,000 people in the central hub of mining in the province of Ontario. From 1976 to 2007, we built brake parts for the automotive world in my home city. I've seen that plant. All I can say about that plant is, if you work there, trust me, you worked in hell and you could work anywhere else because it was a pretty rough place. I've met some people there and they were pretty rough people. 

    From there we moved to Montreal. Montreal, Quebec, like we said, was one of the beginnings of the automobile industry in Canada, but also played a pivotal role in a lot of other manufacturing. 1924 they had pre-vote buses. 1979 they had a plant built for the nova bus manufacturing and in 1993 nova bus took it over and became that actual company in 1988. Campagna, I don't know if you've ever seen the campagna t-rex a three-wheeled motorcycle. You drive it like a motorcycle, need a motorcycle license. There's no brake or gas. It's literally throttle on your hand. It's like a motorcycle really cool thing. This is the thing that actually made the Polaris slingshot into what it is today. Polaris slingshot isn't new.
 
    Campagna built that marketplace for them and that happened 80s. 80s was the next pivotal moment in production. In Canada, Hyundai opened up a plant outside of Montreal in 1989, only running it for four years from 89 to 93, they built the Sonata, which did not take off from the North American marketplace. Have you ever seen the 89 to 93 Sonatas? Trust me, no. Montreal would later become a new foothold with Leon Electric. Have you ever seen Leon Electric? They build those electric school buses that you see in the United States. Those are from a company from Montreal. They build the original battery platforms there and do all the engineering. But they build the actual buses in the United States now, just because they're a market that wants them. But like I said, in the 1980s that's when the automobile industry in Canada took off again in 1985, Toyota executives wanted to set up more manufacturing in North America.
 
     They wanted to get around lots of tariffs and they started to take notice at Canada. The Canadian government gave them some incentives and showed them around and they realized the number of parts that were built in and around the Toronto area and they were astonished and said, hey, we're going to build a plant close to Guelph, Ontario, to Linamar Parts Manufacturing, because along the 401 belt is a lot of automotive parts. Any major city, from Windsor all the way to Montreal, has some form of part manufacturing for the automobile industry in it. Cambridge, Ontario, in 1985, welcomed the original Toyota plant, building both Toyota and the very first Lexus model ever built outside of Japan. Yes, Lexus was never built outside of Japan until they built the Lexus NX and RX at the Cambridge plant in Ontario. A year later, Honda would say hello to Canada with the Alliston plant, originally built to build the Honda Civic.
 
     The Alliston plant, built in 1986, became home to both Honda and Acura products over the years. Now they're going to be putting a massive expansion onto it to build batteries for their new electric vehicles. Unfortunately, the cathodes for this plant are going to be built in the Niagara Peninsula outside of Weiland, Ontario, where all the minerals are going to be coming from electric battery and Temiskaming shores, traveling down Highway 11 all the way through all the congestion in Toronto to go to the Niagara. Going to be coming from electric battery into Temiskaming Shores, traveling down Highway 11, all the way through all the congestion in Toronto to go to the Niagara Peninsula to be turned into cathodes to be turned right back around, travel all the way through Toronto, again back up the 401 to Alliston, Ontario. So essentially your minerals are passing by the plant that the final production product is going to be made in, poor planning on anyone's part. I'll get into that in a later podcast. Trust me, there's a lot going on there.
 
     Due to the increase in both Cambridge and Alliston, Barrie Ontario started taking off. Barrie Ontario just being north of Newmarket. Ontario became the new manufacturing hub for automotive parts manufacturing, being the original home to Northern Breweries and eventually the Northern Breweries plant being shut down and Barrie becoming the main hub for Molson production in Ontario. With its Molson plant. They went from a beer town to an automotive parts town. Barrie is essentially the automotive parts hub of Ontario. Now it is where Georgian College is, and where I took my automotive product design course at. Georgian College is what's called the Canadian Automotive School, and why? Because they not only teach marketing and advertising but they teach production, design and manufacturing process environmental. Everything that goes into building, manufacturing and selling automobiles comes out of the school in Barrie, Ontario, where tons and tons of parts are made. I never realized how many parts are actually made in the city of Barrie until I went to that school. I saw injection molding machines. I saw scrapyards. There's a military base outside of it. It was astonishing to see how big that industry is and even though those companies only employ maybe like 30 or 40 people for some of them, they eventually grew and became even bigger, making Barrie an automotive parts hub for the automotive world, all thanks to the introduction of the Honda Alliston plants.
 
     Further down the road from Cambridge, close to London, Ontario and St. Thomas. Ingersoll said hello to the CAMI plant, originally built to build both Suzuki and General Motors products. CAMI plants today are now home to Bright Drop, or the new Chevrolet Bright Drop vans building both Suzuki Pontiac, Chevrolet Bright Drop, Asuna products and even Geo. For quite a few times it's where the Tracker used to be made the Suzuki XL7s, the Equinox, the Pontiac Torrent they made it all at the Cami plant in Ingersoll, Ontario. Yeah, we actually got to build the first electric vans for General Motors, the ones they won the contract with FedEx for. Pretty cool huh, 

​     1988, the city of Brampton said hello to a brand-new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility called the Bramalea Facility, originally built by American Motors utilizing the original test facility owned by AV Roe or Avro, the company that built the Avro Aero. The facility was the original test bed for all products made. After the Aero failed and when they finally sold it off in the 80s, American Motors bought the plant to build a brand-new production facility for rear-wheel-drive sedans that were going to change the marketplace. This is where AMC was about to win the day, but unfortunately their tie-in with Renault and that horrible, horrible Alliance product made in Kenosha, Wisconsin, killed them off before this plant could be finished and the product could be put into it. The original product was the eagle premier. Yeah, had AMC been able to make that thing, they might have stuck around a little bit longer. The Bramalea plant eventually went on to build products like the intrepid, the 300, the charger, the concord my old beast, the Premier. They built Chrysler, Dodge, Eagle and Jeep products. Now, because the Bramalea plant is now being utilized to build the Compass overflow that Toledo Ohio cannot take care of.
 
     From the 1980s things started to wind down quite a bit. Automotive parts manufacturing became bigger and bigger in the province of Ontario, but no new plants were going in. We came really close to losing the Oakville assembly plant. St. Catherine's nearly shut down the casting plant. After the fallout of Suzuki from the north American marketplace, General Motors considered pulling the plug on it and even the Brampton plant. Before the charger and 300 came out, Chrysler considered just dissolving it and getting it out of the Canadian marketplace. But all that changed in 2005 when Toyota said we don't have enough space at the Cambridge plant. Even with two lines running, we can't build enough vehicles. The Cambridge Ontario plant was actually the most efficient Toyota plant in the entire North American marketplace. Toyota learned that Canadians know how to build vehicles better than the Americans, especially when they do it the Toyota way. And because of this, Toyota saw that the Canadian manufacturing hub needed more space.
 
     Down the road from Cambridge, about half hour 40 minutes is Woodstock, Ontario. The vehicle the only brand-new vehicle I've ever bought in my life comes from that plant, a Toyota RAV4. Rav4s built for the North American marketplace come from Woodstock Ontario. Seriously, if you own one of these, go to your door sill and actually check where the manufacturing site was. It might say either Canada or it'll say Woodstock on it. That is in Ontario and that's where most of the RAV4 production from North America comes from Hell. Some of the RAV4 production from North America comes from hell. Some of those RAV4s even go overseas. All from Canada and I own one. It's actually the second Canadian built product I've ever owned, because I did own a 1994 Chrysler Concorde built at the Bramley plant in Brampton, Ontario. 

     From Woodstock in the early 2000s you go over to Arrington, B.C., a little way outside of Vancouver a small little manufacturer built electric vehicles similar to those key trucks that you find in Japan the might e truck from a Canadian Electric Vehicle, still built today. You'll find them on golf courses of all places in north America, but they started out in 1996 in Errington BC. BC is not really where you think of automotive production, even though it's close to California. You don't think cars. When you think of BC, you think of mining, you think of trees, you think of ports, you think of skiing, you don't think of cars. Well, they're moving their way out.
 
    Electra Meccanica was actually just bought out by Mullen Automotive, the same company that owns Bollinger International, and the reason why they wanted it is because Electra Meccanica built the Solo, which is a car that they utilized original designs from the Meyers Sparrow to build an electric version of it, the Solo, running from 2018 to 2023, didn't sell very well, but did sell in select marketplaces. Today, Electra Meccanica is owned by Mullen Automotive, which is considering utilizing that facility to build a brand-new electric vehicle similar to what Electra Meccanica was working on, the Tofino, a two-door roadster. They're thinking of keeping the brand alive and keeping production in Vancouver, similar to that of Vicinity Motor Corp, a bus manufacturer that was started in 2008 in Vancouver. Yeah, BC has some things.
 
    The newest addition to the automotive production world is Kingston Ontario, what we actually consider our sister city here. Kingston Ontario is built somewhat in the Canadian Shield along the 401. Their only difference is they have a limited access highway where Sudbury doesn't. But they are starting to get into battery production for companies like Tesla. They're not building big scale batteries similar to that of the Windsor and St Thomas plant, but they're getting it to small scale to supply smaller manufacturers entering into the electric vehicle world. Kingston Ontario, with their plant poised to be operational by 2025, Kingston will eventually join the automotive ranks in Canada, and Canada, I would like to say, has built many different vehicles. Our production might just be for one secluded space Running from Kingston Ontario to Windsor and as far north as Aurelia, automotive production may only be congested in one small, tiny little hub with a manufacturing facility, a few out in Vancouver and one in Winnipeg. 

    Automotive production still exists in the Canadian marketplace and Canadian manufacturing is here to stay. With Ford having no idea of stating the fact that they don't want to shut down the Oakville plant, and it's now building the new Super Duty vehicles. They're going to be moving to an electric vehicle platform in the future once the sales start arriving. Stellantis is pouring tons of money into their Windsor plant to move the brand-new electric charger, the Pacifica, and possibly the replacement for the Durango at the Windsor plant. The Brampton plant has no future as of right now. There's a possibility it might be changed over into a battery manufacturer facility, but with a replacement for the Compass coming in and the possibility of the new Jeep electric coming into the North American marketplace, there could be a home for it in Brampton, Ontario. Alliston's getting an addition. Both Toyota plants in Cambridge and in Woodstock are expanding. Linamar is still producing parts for the internal combustion engine is now getting into battery manufacturing, same with Magna international.
 
     The Canadian production is moving. They're not expanding to the massive extents that they once were. We're in a phase where we're kind of expanding, similar to that of what we did in the 80s. We're getting these massive plants with all the filler going to be coming in within the next decade. They like to say in our Ontario government that what's good for the South is good for the North, but unfortunately, with them not pouring enough money up North to get all these minerals that they require for these batteries in the south out of the ground, that's a little more hearsay. So, when you ever see any of those advertisement videos, just call bullshit on it. Like I said, it's been over seven years. Ontario government doesn't want to give us the 20 million dollars to get our lithium refinery up and running, but they just gave out nearly 20 billion dollars in incentives for two battery plants in southern Ontario. So, figure that one out.
 
     Automotive production is here and in Canada. We may not be the biggest and we may not make the top three anymore, but it's still here and it's growing at a rate that we haven't seen in over 40 years. Canadian manufacturing automobiles. We got a lot going for us and we're growing at an extensive rate. Remember the next time somebody says oh, there's no such thing as cars made in Canada, and Canada doesn't produce cars, they make maple syrup beer in bad politics. That's all they do call bullshit on them. Because I guarantee if you own an automobile made within a two-day drive of the Canadian border of Ontario, 15 of your vehicles more than likely came from Canadian suppliers. Don't count us out, we're bigger than you think.
 
     So if you liked our podcast, please like, share or comment about it on any major social feeds or streaming sites that you found the AutoLooks podcast on, and after you do that, hit the like button, hit the follow button, send this out to your friends, send it out to your family and tell them to like and follow us to find out more information about both automotive industry and cars from around the globe, big or small. We have them all on the Corporate Links website page of the AutoLooks.net website. And after that, stop by the website, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings and go to the Corporate Links website page. Like I said, it's all there on the Canada tab for automotive car companies, you can find out any of the car companies we've talked about that are still in existence, all with links to their main websites on the AutoLooks.net website.
 
    The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. So, for myself Everett J. and the AutoLooks website and Ecomm Entertainment Group, strap yourself in for this one fun wild ride that Canadian manufacturing is going to take us on.

Everett J.
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