If your Toyota starts at our Timmins testing facility, it will start in your driveway in winter.

Canada is viewed by the world as a land of ice and snow. Toyota is taking advantage of that reputation. In Timmins, Ontario, where the average low in winter hovers around minus 20 Celsius - Toyota has a facility to test cars and trucks under the most extreme circumstances so they can “prove their worth” in winter conditions before going to market. In Timmins, these extreme circumstances include making sure Toyotas will start even when it’s 40 below and there is 40 centimeters of snow on the ground.

For example, when we tested our Tundra pickup, we subjected the truck to a range of tests, including evaluating the braking, handling, steering, and traction controls on the vehicle, as well as seeing how long it took for the inside to heat up.  Our engineers even cleared snow off the windshield as anyone would, looking to see if any areas were prone to scratches or damage. All of this is done because, once a vehicle passes our extreme tests, we know our customers can expect the same dependability from their vehicles whether they’re in Burlington or the Rockies.

Building testing facilities like the one in Timmins is just one of the ways we live up to our commitment of building cars in the markets where they’re sold. In fact, our Canadian plants manufacture approximately 50 per cent of the vehicles we sell in Canada, including some of our most popular models, like the Toyota RAV4 and Corolla.