The focus of the centre’s work is the complete development of upper body elements for all future Toyota models in Europe, including body, chassis and electronics design; selection and testing of materials and components; engine evaluation; and tuning of driveability characteristics.
The technical centre employs 580 people and is also home to Toyota’s European purchasing and product engineering activities.
Toyota also announced it invested €75m (£52.5m) investment in its technical centre in February 2004, creating 200 additional engineering jobs.
Shinichi Sasaki, president and CEO of Toyota Motor Europe, said: "The expansion of our research and development operations is crucial to our future growth in Europe, as it will help ensure that our European customers are provided with superior quality vehicles that are specifically tailored to their tastes."
Toyota said it aims to take its European sales above one million units and to achieve full production capacity of 806,000 cars, 860,000 engines and 575,000 transmissions by 2006.
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