Toyota moving Tacoma production to San Antonio

The free market is an unforgiving beotch. Michigan still has yet to learn that lesson./

FREMONT, Calif. — Toyota Motor Corp. officially confirmed Thursday that it will relocate production of the Tacoma pickup from a (unionized) plant in Northern California to its state-of-the-art (non-unionized) manufacturing facility in San Antonio by next summer.

The announcement came hours after the Japanese automaker ended its relationship with a joint venture plant in the San Francisco Bay area as part of an effort to reduce excess production capacity at plants around the globe and return to profitability.

As part of the plan to shift Tacoma production to San Antonio, Toyota will stop making vehicles at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant — its first manufacturing facility in the United States, which started in 1984 as a 50-50 business deal with General Motors — in March 2010.