AUTOS

Toyota to Build Truck Plant: Toyota Motor Corp. formally announced that it will build a plant in North America to manufacture pickup trucks. The company refused to say where the plant might be. A report last month in the newspaper Chunichi Shimbun, based in Toyota’s hometown of Nagoya, suggested that Evansville, Ind., was a leading candidate. The plant is to produce 100,000 trucks a year and open in late 1998 or early 1999, Toyota said. Toyota had unofficially disclosed plans for the plant in June as part of an effort by Japanese auto makers to stave off U.S. sanctions on Japanese-made luxury cars. Toyota already has two plants in North America, at Georgetown, Ky., and Cambridge, Canada. It also runs a joint-venture plant in Fremont, Calif., with General Motors Corp.