All of our major auto plants are associated with "come-from-away" automakers, but how did they get to building cars here?

Founded on August 17, 1904, the Ford Motor Company of Canada’s first product was the new Model C; and by 1906, it was shipping to South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1953, it moved its headquarters from Windsor to beside its new factory in Oakville, outside of Toronto.

Another plant in St. Thomas, Ontario opened with the 1965 Falcon, and closed with the Crown Victoria in 2011. The Oakville plant built its last Edge in 2024 and was retooling for electric vehicles (EVs) when that project was shelved. It’s now slated to make Super Duty trucks later in 2026.

Both Canada and the McLaughlin Carriage Company were founded in 1867, the latter near Oshawa, east of Toronto, by Robert McLaughlin. It eventually grew into Canada’s largest manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles, but when Robert’s son Sam saw his first car, he was hooked.

In the U.S., entrepreneur Billy Durant formed General Motors as an umbrella company, buying existing automakers to add to it, and Buick was his first. McLaughlin was impressed with Buick, and signed a 15-year deal to build his cars using its engines and drivelines. His first car was the McLaughlin-Buick Model F in 1907, and his company went on to become one of Canada’s most successful firms.

Durant overextended GM and his directors kicked him out, and so he created Chevrolet in 1911 and used that to leverage his way back in. But just prior, he convinced McLaughlin to build the car as well. Canada built Buick and Chevrolet models under the same roof before GM did in the U.S.

GM in the U.S. owned half of McLaughlin’s company through the parts deal, and with no sons to take over his company, Sam sold his half in 1918, creating General Motors of Canada. Its numerous facilities in Oshawa are now down to a single complex that currently assembles pickup trucks. An engine plant in St. Catharines, opened in 1952, now makes V8 engines. A factory opened in Ingersoll in 1989 as a joint venture with Suzuki, and most recently made the Chevrolet BrightDrop, but it’s been idle since that electric delivery van was discontinued in 2025. A plant in Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec made some four million vehicles, including the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, from 1965 until 2002.

Stellantis’ brands include Chrysler, named for Walter Chrysler, an auto executive and engineer who had a knack for rescuing struggling automakers. In 1921, he was asked to help bring back from the brink Maxwell, a Detroit-based company that also had a factory in Windsor, Ontario. He fixed and then acquired the company, and in 1924, added an all-new car he named for himself.

In 1925, he reorganized Maxwell into the Chrysler Corporation; and eleven days later, the Windsor facility became Chrysler Canada. Chrysler would later buy Dodge, and then introduce two brands, Plymouth and DeSoto, which would eventually be discontinued from the lineup; but all of these were built in the company’s Canadian facilities as well.

In 1954, independent U.S.-based automakers Nash and Hudson merged to form American Motors Corporation (AMC), which later acquired Jeep. Nash already had a plant in Toronto, but in the 1960s, AMC moved west of that to Brampton, and then built a new plant there in 1986. Chrysler bought AMC a year later, primarily to get Jeep, and that new plant was part of the deal. It would eventually build the Chrysler 300, and Dodge Charger and Challenger. Production ended in 2023, and the plant’s future is currently still up in the air. The Windsor facilities now make the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, and gas and electric Dodge Chargers.

Toyota built its first passenger car in Japan in 1936, and established a sales office in the U.S. in 1957. Honda initially made motorcycles starting in 1947, and opened a U.S. office to sell them in 1958. It built small trucks and cars in Japan starting in 1963, and brought cars to America starting in 1969.

But Americans were used to large and powerful cars, and sales were slow. That changed in 1973, when political tensions over the Yom Kippur War resulted in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cutting off oil supplies to the U.S. Many American stations rationed or ran out of gas, and suddenly, those tiny, fuel-sipping Japanese cars looked pretty good, especially as their companies tweaked them to better appeal to the market.

Recessions later hit American automakers hard, and in 1981, president Ronald Reagan asked Japan to voluntarily limit its auto exports — but not necessarily the number of cars it sold, and local production would help get around that.

Honda already had a motorcycle factory in Ohio, and Toyota was making parts in California, but both began building cars. Others opened plants, too, including Nissan and Subaru, but while Canada also arranged a similar voluntary restriction with Japan on cars coming into this country, Honda and Toyota were the only ones to open factories north of the border.

Honda was founded by Soichiro Honda, whose company initially made piston rings for Toyota. After the Second World War, he bought small army-surplus engines and used them to power bicycles; and from there he made motorcycles. When Honda opened its motorcycle factory in Ohio in 1979, it was the first Japanese company to manufacture any product in the U.S. Three years later it opened a new plant beside it, and an Accord became the first Japanese car made in America.

Honda sold motorcycles and cars in Canada through a distributor starting in 1965, and then created Honda Canada in 1969 to sell them itself. In 1986, an Accord was the first car off the line in a new plant in Alliston, Ontario. A second plant opened beside it in 1998, initially making the Odyssey minivan, while a third facility opened in 2008 to make engines. Honda was also the first Japanese automaker to launch a luxury division, Acura; and when Alliston made the 1997 EL, it was the first plant outside of Japan to build an Acura.

Honda set a global mandate to be EV-only after 2040, and unveiled a new “0” line of battery vehicles. It also planned a massive plant and supplier expansion in Allison to make batteries; but “0” and the EV mandate were cancelled in early 2026, and the Alliston expansion has been “indefinitely suspended.”

Toyota vehicles initially came to Canada through an importer, Canadian Motor Industries (CMI). It put together the Isuzu Bellett, the first Japanese car assembled in Canada, in its factory near Sydney, Nova Scotia. The Bellett was made in Japan and shipped over in pieces as a complete knock-down (CKD) kit, starting in 1968. CMI then imported and assembled some 9,000 Toyota Corolla CKD kits; and in 1980, CMI became Toyota Canada.

Its first manufacturing venture was Canadian Auto Parts Toyota in Delta, B.C. in 1985, making wheels that were primarily shipped to factories in Japan. It built an auto plant in Cambridge, Ontario, making its first Corolla in 1988; and in 2003 would be the first plant outside of Japan to make a Lexus. A second plant opened in Cambridge in 1997; and then a third in Woodstock, some 50 km away, which began building the RAV4 in 2009.

Toyota built its five millionth vehicle in Canada in 2012, and the following year, the Lexus RX became its first hybrid made here. Its head office in Toronto will soon undergo a major expansion that will incorporate all its departments into one building, including sales, marketing, credit, and training. It will also build new parts distribution centres in Calgary and in Surrey, B.C.

Studebaker was founded as a wagon company in Indiana in 1852, and added automobiles in 1902. It made cars in Walkerville, Ontario from 1910 until 1936; and returned to Canadian production in Hamilton, Ontario in 1948. But mismanagement and some poor business decisions on the U.S. side drained it, and at the end of 1963, Studebaker closed its older Indiana plant and moved everything to the newer Hamilton facility.

That technically made Studebaker a Canadian automaker, and it could import cars into Canada duty-free. To raise badly-needed funds, it bought Volkswagens from Germany and sold them to Volkswagen Canada, adding a profit lower than the tariffs VW would have paid. But it wasn’t enough, and Studebaker built its last car in Hamilton in March 1966.

In 1963, Volvo established its first facility outside of Sweden – and the first for a European automaker in North America – when it moved into a factory in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and then a larger one in Halifax. It assembled CKD kits, including the 120 Amazon series, which it renamed the Volvo Canadian for the market; the 240 series; the PV544; and its last car, a 1999 S70 sedan, assembled on December 11, 1998, after which the plant closed.

In Quebec, SOMA (Société de Montage Automobile), a partnership of Renault, Peugeot, and the province’s financing department, opened a plant in 1965 in Saint-Bruno. It built some 55,000 Renaults and 2,800 Peugeots before numerous issues forced its closure in 1974.

And Hyundai, which catapulted to the top of the sales charts in 1984 with its inexpensive Pony, opened a plant in Bromont, Quebec in 1989 to build its new Sonata. Unfortunately, that initial sales momentum didn’t last, and the plant closed in September 1993. Hyundai opened its first plant in the U.S. in 2005, but doesn’t seem to have plans to return production to Canada.