CompleteCar

Update on Japanese car factory closures

The earthquake disaster in Japan has caused several of the country's car makers to halt production.

Many of Japan's car makers have closed factories and suspended production in the wake of the country's earthquake disaster.

Honda has shut five plants indefinitely and suspended work at one more until 20 March. The most serious damage to Honda factories was in the Tochigi area where the company has its engineering and research and development facilities.

One worker is known to have been killed when a wall toppled at the R&D plant and a further 30 workers were injured.

Nissan has also suspended production at the factories producing the GT-R and its Infiniti luxury cars after fires broke out. The fires were soon extinguished, but all work has ceased for an indefinite period. Nissan also evacuated employees from its technology centre to the south of Tokyo after a complete power cut made work impossible.

Subaru has shut five factories across Japan, though there are no reports of any injuries at its plants. A Subaru spokesman said: "We're lucky there have been no major injuries to our workforce and their safety has to be our prime concern. When the situation is clearer, we'll assess when full production can start again."

Toyota has several factories in the north of Japan and it has ceased production of several models, including the Yaris.

A Toyota spokesman said the company was not certain when production would resume or what the impact would be on deliveries of new cars. One Toyota insider told CompleteCar.ie: "Right now, we're dealing with the immediate problems caused by the earthquake and making sure all of our workers are safe. This is our priority and car production will only begin again when it's completely safe to do so."

Honda has already offered 300 million yen in aid to help with recovery from the earthquake and is also providing 1,000 generators to provide electricity to communities affected by the quake.

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Published on March 16, 2011