Made in Canada
If you’re looking for a vehicle that’s built right here on Canadian soil, you have plenty of choices. In fact, five automakers build 25 different vehicles in Canada, ranging from compact coupes and high-performance pony cars to luxury sedans and crossovers. In some cases, these Canadian assembly plants are the exclusive suppliers of these vehicles to the North American – and even global – marketplace. Here are the vehicles that wear the Made-in-Canada label:
Chrysler Canada, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) US LLC, has two manufacturing facilities in Canada, both serving as exclusive suppliers to the company’s global markets and producing 571,597 vehicles overall in 2013. The 2.95-million square-foot plant in Brampton, ON was originally built by American Motors Corp. in 1986 and taken over a year later when Chrysler acquired AMC. It now produces three key products in the FCA corporate lineup – the Chrysler 300 sedan, the Dodge Charger sedan and the Dodge Challenger sport coupe. All models of these cars, including high-performance SRT versions such as the sizzling Challenger Hellcat, are assembled in Brampton for global distribution. (The plant also assembled the Lancia Thema, a badge-engineered Chrysler 300 that was available in overseas markets.)
An assembly plant in Windsor, ON, originally built in 1928, has expanded over the decades to become a sprawling 4.4-million-square-foot facility that is now the sole source of the company’s popular minivan models. The Windsor plant began building its segment-setting Magic Wagon minivan in 1985 and today produces the Dodge Caravan (scheduled to be phased out in 2015) and Chrysler Town & Country models, as well as the Ram Cargo Van. Until recently, it also built the Volkswagen Routan van plus the right-hand-drive Lancia Grand Voyager for overseas markets.
General Motors of Canada has two production facilities in Canada – its Oshawa, Ontario assembly plant and the CAMI assembly plant at Ingersoll, Ontario. The Oshawa plant has two production lines – the Flex Line, which builds all iterations of the Chevrolet Camaro coupe and convertible for the global market...
This production line also assembles the Chevrolet Impala sedan, shown here, the Buick Regal sedan and the premium Cadillac XTS sedan.
The second GM production line in Oshawa, called the Consolidated Line, builds the fleet version of the Chevrolet Impala and finishes assembly of the Chevrolet Equinox compact SUV using bodies built at the CAMI plant.
That facility builds complete Equinox models, in addition to the bodies shipped to Oshawa, as well as the Terrain, a sister model sold under the GMC nameplate.
Toyota’s manufacturing arm, TMMC (Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc.), has three production facilities in Canada. It has a pair of assembly plants sprawling over three million square feet in Cambridge, ON. The North Plant rolled out its first vehicle on Nov. 30, 1988 – a Toyota Corolla. Today, it’s still building Corollas at the rate of 1,000 cars every day. On Sept. 30, 2014, it celebrated the production of its six millionth vehicle.
Adjacent to the Corolla facility is the South Plant, which is the only plant outside Japan that builds Lexus vehicles. It produces the Lexus RX 350 crossover utility vehicle and earlier in 2014 added the RX 450h hybrid CUV to its production line.
Honda opened its Canadian production facility in 1986 at Alliston, ON and today the complex includes three plants – one building aluminum engines; the other two assembling compact Civic models and the CR-V compact SUV with the capacity to roll out 390,000 vehicles annually.
Plant No. 1 builds the Civic sedan, sporty Civic Si and the Civic Coupe. Plant No. 2 builds the CR-V and its flexible production line can also add the Civic sedan when market demand dictates a boost in production.
The lone remaining Ford assembly facility in Canada is located in Oakville, but this sprawling plant assembles four crossover models. Originally opened in April 1953, it produced most of Ford’s models for the Canadian market until 1966. Now occupying 5.5-million square feet of production space, the Oakville plant is the sole source for the Edge and will be supplying the all-new 2015 iteration for the global market. The plant also builds the Ford Flex crossover, as well as all iterations of two luxury Lincoln CUVs – the mid-size MKX and the full-size MKT.
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