Canadian Made

Podcast Episode: 0218
How big is the Canadian Automotive Industry?

    How is it that Canada is a top producing nation without its own automotive company?  AutoLooks takes a look at how big this industry really is in Canada and the products we make or have made within our boarders.  You may be surprised at how much we have to offer the automotive world.

    Oh, Canada, my home and native land. It may not seem like the automotive behemoth that you would think that it is, but in all reality, Canada is an automotive producing nation. Only one main select area of our entire country is an automotive behemoth, but at that certain specific point in southern Ontario, in the St Lawrence Seaway, Canada makes cars and even though we have built many different cars and had many different products, we are still not known as an automotive nation of the world. Well, that's all about to change, as the AutoLooks podcast is going to take a look at our home in native land. We're going to take a look at the vehicles and the companies that make Canada an automotive powerhouse. 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 main 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 go to the Corporate Links website page. Big or small, we have them all on the AutoLooks.net Corporate Links website page. The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group, 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, like I said in the beginning, Canada an automotive behemoth. When I took my automotive product design course way back, we're talking like almost 20 years ago, Canada was third in the world for automotive production. You might not think it, considering the fact we were a country of just over 30 million people and we have no major car companies. How is Canada an automotive behemoth and number three in the world when you consider in context to the industry, to the people who build the vehicles? Well, it could be, because one of the largest automotive parts manufacturers in the world hails from none other than Aurora, Ontario. If you don't know where that is, I'll give you a big hint it's part of the Greater Toronto-Hamilton megacity area, just north of Markham, just below Newmarket aurora, Ontario, where Frank Stronach built Magna International and yes, Magna International is Canadian and magna international makes automotive parts. I have worked for let me see well one of their companies. I've also worked for the biggest automotive parts company in the world, dana. Dana does build parts in Canada as well, and the whole city of Newmarket Ontario was actually built in the 1950s to service the automobile industry, because back then you actually had to build cars in Canada a specific amount to be sold here. Either that or you had to pay massive tariffs. Well, the Americans liked us because they were able to build our cars here and then ship them to the other side of the road because Canada was still a part of the British Commonwealth, which means if you built this stuff in our country, you didn't pay any tariffs to ship them over to Great Britain, easy way into the European marketplace and any Commonwealth country that Great Britain's a part of. Huh, that helped build our Canadian automotive industry. 

​     But Canada isn't just all about parts. Next to Magna International and Linamar, Canada also builds a multitude of different vehicles. As of right now, you have Brightdrop, Chevrolet, Chrysler, dodge, ford, Honda, jeep, Lexus and Toyota all building products in Canada. Brightdrop, which has now just changed over to becoming a Chevrolet vehicle, builds both of their vans at the Cammy plant outside of Ingersoll, Ontario, or if you don't know where that is, it's essentially just outside of London, Ontario, about three-and-a-half-hour drive from Detroit. Chevrolet builds its Silverado at the Oshawa production facility. ​

​      Now I'm going to give you a little history here. The Oshawa Manufacturing Facility. Oshawa is Canada's Detroit, because Oshawa is where the biggest Canadian car company ever existed McLaughlin Buick. Yes, the McLaughlin’s. They went from making carriages to building vehicles and both Sam and his brother are the reason why William C Durant got his seat back at General Motors. When GM outed Mr. Durant and he was out like literally out off the GM board, out of the company that he helped build. You have to remember, William C Durant helped build General Motors into what it was, buying up all of these great car companies and merging them all together to take out every single piece of the market share away from Ford Motor Company, who had a stranglehold in the automotive industry. Durant saw this but the boards didn't like his ideas and they outed him. Two brothers who were building some vehicles with the help of Mr. Durant were building Buicks in Canada off of their own production facility, adding their own touches to them, which made them McLaughlin’s.
 
     One of the most premier vehicles. Hell, the freaking king of England took one because he loved it so much. They were one of the best carriage makers in the country and one of the best in North America. But Sam and his brother had bigger ideas. They saw the advent of the automobile industry and they wanted their dad to pursue automobile production. It took a little while and they wanted their dad to pursue automobile production. It took a little while but they eventually got there and when Durant was outed from General Motors, they helped him financially get his foot back in the door at GM. They essentially Canadians helped him buy his way back into General Motors where he took it over and turned it into the behemoth it is today. For that Mr. Durant built a massive production facility in Oshawa, Ontario. He expanded the McLaughlin's production capacity while building his own vehicles there for the Canadian marketplace, turning Oshawa into Canada's Detroit. It is the automotive city of Canada. So, without the help of Canadians Mr. Durant wouldn't have gotten back to General Motors, and without family in Canada Henry Ford would have never visited here either.
 
     Hell, Mr. Chrysler himself had spent some time in Windsor. Sergio Marchionne, the previous corporate executive from FCA and Fiat, had a dual citizenship and did his schooling in Canada. He was both Canadian and Italian. A little bit more from how we help the auto industry. But yeah, other vehicles we build here. Chrysler builds the Pacifica Voyager and, up until recently, the Caravan at the Windsor production facility. Ford has a casting plant in Windsor but also has the Edge and Nautilus production at the Oakville plant which is now being retooled to build new F-250s at Dodge. Up until recently was building the Charger. They're going to be building it in the Windsor plant now, which Stellantis has made a massive investment into a brand-new battery plant that's going to be going up in Windsor and creating thousands of jobs, just like Volkswagen's now coming to Canada for a massive plant in St Thomas Ontario. 

​      Funny thing is brand-new their plant in St Thomas, Ontario isn't too far away, where one of the most famous police cars was ever built. The Crown Vic was Canadian. It was built in Canada, in St Thomas Ontario. Yeah, ford built that there. When they closed down production of that vehicle, they decided to close up shop at the plant. They didn't want to keep it anymore. They didn't have a reason to keep it anymore and, considering the fact that needed a lot of updating, ford just decided to pull the plug and say we're out now. They haven't done that with Oakville because our government really pushes them to keep that plant open. But St. Thomas, the last crown victoria ever made came out of St. Thomas, Ontario, and most of the production of that body on frame famous police car and cab came from Canada and that's where Volkswagen’s going to be building a massive battery plant for north American production. 

​      North of Toronto, just outside of Barrie, Ontario, is a small town at Alliston, where Honda builds the civic and CRV at its Alliston plant. Now they're going to be expanding this plant and building battery capacity on that as well, which I was actually a little upset over, because that and the cathodes they're going to be taking from Niagara Falls to build cathodes to ship them all the way up to Alliston. If you know anything about Ontario, you're shipping stuff straight through the heart of congestion in Toronto. I always thought they're going to build a cathode plant to service the plant in Alliston. They would have built it in Orillia, Ontario, 40-minute drive up the road from it on a highway that's still underutilized. Come on, guys, somebody didn't think Jeep is now using the Brampton plant to build Compass. Until they decide what they're going to be doing with the Brampton plant. The Brampton plant actually the Bramley plant was actually one of the most technically advanced plants when it was built in the 1980s and it was built by American Motors, no-transcript.
 
       And then when you head on to both Woodstock and Cambridge 40-minute isn't that far away from Woodstock you know 30, 40 minutes. Woodstock, Ontario is where my personal vehicle came from. Well, I shouldn't say mine, my wife's vehicle. We have a Toyota RAV4 and it was built in Woodstock, Ontario. I've been to the plant and I brought my vehicle there. Up the road from that in Cambridge Ontario, you'll find the Lexus RX and Lexus NX. When they were first built there, they were the first Lexus vehicles ever built outside of Japan. Even though Lexus isn't sold in Japan, they never built any outside of Japan until they built them in Cambridge, Ontario. So, we own the rights to the very first Lexus built in North America. Thanks, Canada. But next for production in our parts, we also have major transportation construction in this country. 

      I'm not talking about our aerospace, because if you know anything about Canada, you know that we have a massive aerospace industry, considering the fact that we built the Canada arm, that giant arm in space. Yeah, that big guy that reached out and grabbed the Hubble telescope to bring it in to get fixed, then that's from Canada. If you didn't know that, and if you also didn't know that, that IMAX is from Canada and quite a few people from NASA who helped put a man on the moon came from the Avro Corporation when that company got shut down. Most of them went and helped put a man on the moon at NASA. So, a little Canadiana for you.
 
    But Canada, if you didn't know this, is actually home to two big industries in the automotive world. One is buses and two is armored vehicles. Yeah, Canada, a nice country, one of the nicest in the world, maybe not as nice as Japan, but still pretty nice. We build tons of armored vehicles. It's kind of amazing. When I found that out, you know, almost 20 years ago, I was amazed at the fact. The number of armored vehicles that come from Canada. Companies like Conquest and Teradyne are from Canada. If you've seen Fast and Furious 5, the first time the Rock ever shows up in a Fast and Furious movie, he's in this massive tank-looking truck that's Canadian.
 
      Now, the engine and the platform that underpins that vehicle is not Canadian because a lot of them are built off of Chevrolet or Ford platforms. But if you know anything about those platforms, full frame General Motors truck frames are built in Canada. I worked at that plant in Format Industries in St Thomas, Ontario, where I worked on the production line that built GM, Chevrolet and Hummer back in the day frames, truck frames. Dodge utilized them and Ford utilized them as well. Why? Because Magna International pioneered a brand-new forming process called hydroforming bending metal underwater so that you ensure there are no breaking points on corners. It was an amazing thing. I learned about it while I was in college. It was so cool and to see those machines in action like we created that here and we all know that hydroforming has been going on for a long time. But we pioneered that in frame production for vehicles.
 
      Yeah, so the frame that underpins that Teradyne is built in Canada, but for an American car company, that vehicle is a Teradyne Gurkha built in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Now, if you didn't know this, the epicenter of the automotive industry in all of Canada is, okay, everything is Toronto. Trust me, if you're not from Toronto in this country, you're from everywhere else and, trust me, you don't like the Toronto because it has everything. But, yeah, within a four-hour radius around Toronto, well, I would only say about an hour north of it, but like four hours east, four hours west, four hours south is all automotive. Southern Ontario is the automotive and manufacturing hub of this country, but Winnipeg, Manitoba, is the home of armored vehicles and our other big industry in this country motor coaches Now you've probably seen your favorite band show up in a dedicated transportation unit as a Prevost bus. 

​       Now those are built in Quebec, not Quebec City, but like Quebec, the province. But next to that you have Alexander and Dennis Motor Coach Industries, new Flyer NFI Group in Plaxton. They build buses like actual buses and it's pretty cool to see them. We're talking motor coaches like Greyhound-style buses, city buses, and they're made in Manitoba. Manitoba is technically the center of the country. Just outside of Winnipeg is actually the town which classifies as the center of the country. When you're going across it. All rail travel goes there. It's the center hub for transportation in the country. So, it's kind of funny that transportation units like buses and armored vehicles come from that epicenter. But its other bus counterpart comes from Quebec.
 
       The St Lawrence Seaway area between Quebec City and Montreal is the epicenter for manufacturing, also in Quebec. But it runs the manufacturing lines Within that. We've had some actual car companies, even recent car companies, come from that area. They've built those buses, so Prevost buses. But on top of that there's also the pioneer into the electric school bus industry, lion Electric from Quebec. Now they may have a big manufacturing plant in the United States but their home is Quebec. 

​       Yes, next to. That is Can-Am. Or if you don't know who they are, that's Bombardier, the man who created the snow machine and the Sea-Doo BRP Can-Am. You know those Can-Am spiders, those three-wheeled motorcycles you see going around. Those come from Canada and it's a Canadian company. Yeah, they make personal vehicles like that. We don't, per se, have our own car company in this country, but we do have a few companies that make some pretty cool cars DeMacross with the gt1, the Felino cb7. I don't know if you've ever heard of HTT. They had a car called the Plethore. Now that company's now gone, but it was pretty cool. Moke, you know, the brand-new electric Moke came from France. Well, it doesn't come from France anymore, it comes from Canada. It's made here by electric city-runabout companies, which Canada is actually having an increase in, because we also have a company from Toronto called Daymark who makes the Avenire, which is kind of funny because it's very reminiscent.
 
      Remember Campania? Have you ever seen the movie Biker Boys? I know it's not a super big movie, but Lawrence Fishburne, it's a good movie, biker Boys. And they have the one guy in a wheelchair and he wants to ride a bike and you see him get out of this three-wheeled motorcycle-style thing where he can sit down in it, but he can still drive it like a motorcycle. That's a Campania T-Rex. They came from Montreal. Now the company went bust and has since recently come back to life. It's Canadian, Canadian invention, Canadian built, Canadian technology all in that vehicle Pretty cool. 

​     Magna Steyr has worked on many different concepts and, hell, Magna Steyr may not be 100% Canadian. It was originally founded by the Canadian, but an Austrian counterpart builds full cars on the other side of the world. Hell, you hear about local motors and their 3D printed car. Okay, if you didn't know this, they weren't the first ones to pioneer 3D printing a vehicle and traveling with it. That was actually funny enough. A company from Winnipeg, Manitoba, again called Urbee. They built a 3D printed car that was solar powered. It was essentially just an experimental vehicle, but it was built to try out the product, to see if it could work, see if we can actually make stuff like that, and it did.
 
      Unfortunately, in this country there's not a lot of backing for really cool stuff, as we've seen with Western University, or from Waterloo and their Havalar project, which is an electric pickup truck they developed over a decade ago, long before the Tesla's Cybertruck was even thought of Havalar attempted to do this and even built a prototype of it, but no financial backing. Right now, we have what we call Project Arrow, a new technology thing utilizing all kinds of different parts manufacturers like Magna and Linamar together trying to build a Canadian car, project Aero not associated with my Aerodynamic Motor Vehicles Corporation or Aero Cars that I personally developed and tried to create myself. This Aero is A-R-R-O-W like the Avro Aero, and if you really want to see something cool and some amazing Canadian technology, go and look at Avro Aero. It was one great feat of technology for Canada in the 1950s. Unfortunately, we poured too much money into it and Avro kind of shot themselves in the foot by running only one major project. That's how we got that Black Monday thing in Canada. Yeah, shitty, go back and read the story, you'll find it kind of interesting. But with that we had some pretty cool technology, one of the greatest technological marvels that we've ever had in Canada, and if you want to see this, you can go online and find the video of it. It's so amazing. 

     ​Have you ever heard of the DJ Deadmau5? Okay, he's Canadian and he lives just outside of Burlington, close to kind of between Burlington and Milton, Ontario, along the escarpment he has this huge mansion. Well, he took a bus ride down to go pick up his Ford GT. And why was he able to do that? Because the Ford GT the last one they made was built in Canada by a company called Multimatic. Multimatic is one of the best companies in the world for carbon fiber technology and it was between them and ProDrive, and ProDrive just really couldn't cut that. Neither could Cosworth. Multimatic was better and won the contract to build the Ford GT in Milton Ontario. Yeah, the Ford GT came from Canada and Deadmau5 literally lived not too far away from it. Pretty cool story.
 
      Now, I know a couple of years ago everybody's heard about that weird, funny all-terrain vehicle that can go and do anything, called the Sherp. But we all know it's got a lot of issues. It's built in a third world nation; it doesn't use very good quality stuff. Well, a couple of engineers over in Montreal decided to rework the vehicle to be able to handle Canadian toughness and they built what they call the Fat Truck, the biggest competitor towards the Sherp. And now the Sherp is starting to lose its edge and Fat Truck is starting to move in. Now these things are horribly overpriced and the people that really want to use them and really need them can't afford them but they do have a select location, similar to that of how, just down the road from me, there used to be a company called Power Tracks that built those tracked vehicles that went into the bush to do power line work. My uncle actually worked on their plant and I've been in it. So fat trucks similar to that, the very niche marketplace and niche product, it's pretty cool. 

​      But, like I said, Canada over the years has a multitude of different vehicles and a multitude of different vehicles we've created. The McLaughlin was one of the biggest original ones but it's no longer around. Ford and General Motors had their own divisions, special Canadian divisions that have gone bust. Well, not bust, but have reverted back so dedicated. Once meteor and Acadian were Canadian products made in Canada for Canadians with a Canadian name but owned by the bigger conglomerates.
 
      Manic was from Quebec. They tried to build their own sports car last a little while did? It's been pretty decent things, kind of cool. Zen motor was one just recently trying to create an electric car company, kind of like dynasty it, but never really got off the ground. The Dubuc Tomahawk was a sports car trying to come out of Quebec that never really took off.
 
     An HTT Plethore, an aeronautics engineer, wanted to build his own supercar with a center driving position and sell it in the North American marketplace where, if you knew anything about the automotive marketplace in North America, you can't sell a center-driven vehicle. That's why the McLaren F1, when it came here, only came with one seat, because you're not allowed to have two in this country. Yeah, really sucks. But the HTT Plethore was an amazing supercar. Seeing this thing up close and in real life, got pictures of it, talked to the people, it is cool, it is amazing, it is powerful, but never took off. 

​      Had it have come out like right now, maybe it would have a better chance of survival, unlike in the 1970s when Malcolm Bricklin, the American businessman, tried to build Bricklin Motors in Canada, that was actually done in New Brunswick. If you didn't know this, there was actually manufacturing facilities on the east coast of Canada. Volvo also had a plant outside of Halifax too. Both of them are gone now, with the only automotive manufacturing that happens in this country is done in Ontario. Now there's nothing done in Quebec, nothing done on the East Coast and definitely nothing done on the West. Electra Meccanica was the only BC car company to exist in the past 20 years and it's just been sold off to Mullen Automotive, so we can say goodbye to that project. So yeah, over the years Canada has had a ton of influence and products in the automotive industry.
 
     Right now, in the United States and you're driving a vehicle on a highway that was manufactured within a day, day and a half drive of the Canadian border, so if you're driving a vehicle that was built at the Ford plant in Chicago, you're going to have quite a few parts in your car that came from Canada. We develop and create a lot. The program I took at Georgian College, which is the automotive college of Canada, showcased to me all of the different parts that are made here, from door handles to full transmissions. We do it all. We build tons and tons of parts in this country and that's why a group from there tried to create Project Arrow, to build a car company from Canadian technology.
 
     I did a podcast about this years ago, like back in the first season, called Canada's Motorcade, if you want to go back and listen to it, and I talk about the fact that Canada, one of the top countries in the world, part of the G8, does not have their own car company. We cruise around in mostly American built vehicles, not even ones from our home country. It doesn't matter that they're American owned. We don't even drive around. Our prime minister doesn't even drive around with vehicles from this country. If you know anything about Vladimir Putin, I'm not getting into the whole Ukraine thing here about Aurus Motors. He built that car company to showcase Russian technology in the automotive industry and I always say Canada needs to do the same thing. We need to use our technology and showcase it to the world. Build a Canadian car company. We almost had it. At one point. 

​     Frank Stronach from Magna International bought Opel Vauxhall from General Motors. It was a done deal and he even looked at trying to get Saturn. He wanted them and he started buying out land north of Orillia to build a production facility to bring those vehicles to North America. He wanted to create his own new car company. Magnus always wanted to have his own car company. He builds cars for car companies but doesn't have his own. But General Motors went backtracked and pulled the deal out from underneath them and now they're part of the whole Stellantis conglomerate. Unfortunately, had Magnus International been able to get a hold of that, Opel Vauxhall would have been Canadian, similar to Aston Martin, if you didn't know this. It's not only Aston Martin, the Formula One team, but Aston Martin, the car company that's owned by a Canadian. Yes, Lawrence Stroll owns both. The largest shareholder in Aston Martin automobiles is from Canada. Not the first time a Canadian has held a car company from around the globe, but the most recent. We have them, we've created them, we have parts in them and we've gone after them. 

    Canada is an automotive powerhouse. In my home province of Ontario, one out of every eight jobs are tied to the automotive industry. Used to be one out of every six 20 years ago, but we've kind of faltered a bit. We are one of the top automotive producing nations in the world ago, but we've kind of faltered a bit. We are one of the top automotive producing nations in the world, based off of our population and the amount of people that build parts. We don't build as many cars as everyone else in the world, but when you consider it, compared to our population of just over 40 million people, we build a hell of a lot of parts.
 
     As of right now, wherever you're listening to this podcast, I guarantee you there's at least one part in your car that was built in Canada or built by a Canadian company Canadian made we do exist. We just don't put our stamp of approval on it because we like to know that our products are out there without our face on it. So, if you like this podcast, please like, share or comment about it on any major social feeds or streaming sites that you've found the AutoLooks podcast or AutoLooks on. And then after that hit the like button, hit the share button and hit the follow button to find out more from the AutoLooks podcast and the AutoLooks.net website for all of our ratings, reviews and end-of-the-year reviews that are going to be coming up. And after that send this podcast out to your friends, your families and your well-wishers. You hate people you like; we don't care. Send it out to the automotive fanatics that you know out in the world and help spread the word of the AutoLooks podcast.
 
    And after that, stop by the website, check out the ratings, read the reviews and go to the corporate links website and find these car companies. You go to the corporate links website page we actually have a Canada tab on that where, if you click it, you can see every existing Canadian car company or parts manufacturer. It's right there for you to find it all from the AutoLooks.net website. The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by Podbeam.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at Autoluxnet. So, from myself, Everett Jay, the Ecomm Entertainment Group and the AutoLooks Podcast, strap yourself in for this one fun wild ride that Canada's going to take you on. Thank you.

Everett J.
​#autolooks