Toyota Motor Corp.  (NYSE: TM), whose already bruised reputation suffered another blow yesterday following yet another media report about a government safety investigation, does have plenty of friends in Mississippi.

That’s where the Japanese automaker plans to open its Blue Springs plant which will assemble Corollas.   With an unemployment rate at more than 11 percent, the state needs the jobs. This is such a big deal that Gov. Haley Barbour joined Toyota officials Monday in announcing that the automaker was beginning to take applications for jobs at the plant.  People certainly want to work for Toyota, as the state’s Clarion Ledger newspaper notes.

“Last month, 5,000 people applied for 37 salaried positions at the Blue Springs plant,” according to the newspaper. “The automaker expects to have 1,500 employees within the next two years.”

Automakers have flocked to the South for years because of low costs and state laws there make it difficult for unions to organize. Earlier this year,  South Korea’s Kia Motor Corp. opened a $1 billion plant in Georgia about 75 miles southwest of Atlanta.  Volkswagen AG expects to begin operations at its Tennessee plant in 2011 and has already hired more than 1,000 workers. Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. is building a $325 million turbine manufacturing facility in Savannah, Georgia that will employ 500.

For Toyota, though, the construction of the new plant comes at a difficult time.   Worries about sudden acceleration in some vehicles, which government investigators later said was largely the result of driver error, casts a dark cloud over the brand. Toyota, though, is still feeling the effects of the negative publicity and a recall of 9 million vehicles in the past 12 months.  U.S. sales in July were 169,224 units, a decrease of 6.8 percent from the same period last year.  Meanwhile, Toyota’s quality continues to be lackluster.]

The drumbeat of negative publicity for Toyota continues.  Media reports say the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration is intensifying its investigation into sudden-stalling problems on Toyota Corolla and Matrix models.  That’s the last thing the automaker needed.

Too bad Toyota can’t sell more cars to the grateful people of Mississippi.

Jon Berr

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