AW North Carolina, which makes transmissions for Toyotas, announced today that it will invest $14 million in its Durham facility and add as many as 250 jobs over the next year.

The expansion comes a little less than two years after AW announced in April 2010 a $100 million expansion that was to create as many of 360 jobs over two years.

The company said today that the $100 million expansion is now complete, and that the new jobs and investment are in addition to the earlier project.

AW now employs 1,500 full-time and temporary workers at its Durham facility. The company is a subsidiary of Japan’s Aisin AW.

Most of the Super Bowl's pre-game musical chatter centered on Madonna's halftime show, and her set was fine in a sensory-overload kind of way. But my favorite music during the game actually turned up right before halftime, in a Toyota commercial -- which featured the understated piano fanfare of "Hope You Know," a track on local trio Megafaun's eponymous 2011 album. Here, check it out.

Toyota announced today that the Prius hybrid has passed more than a million in sales in the United States. Read more about it here.

AW North Carolina, which makes transmissions for Toyotas, announced this morning that it will invest more than $100 million in its Durham operations and add as many as 360 jobs over two years.

The expansion comes as the company adds a new product line. It will make fully assembled front wheel drive automatic transmissions for Toyota North America. The new line transfers work now being done in Japan to Durham. AW is a subsidiary of Japan's Aisin AW.

Remember the runaway Prius(Runaway
Prius wrangled to a stop)?

Consumer Reports released this video after a California motorist in a runaway Prius panicked. Thankfully, the car was stopped without incident with the aid of a patrolman.

Not there would be a good time for this to occur, but this so soon after Toyota's elaborate refutal of an electroinc cause could be the worst possible timing. Check out the video on the jump.

This time the world's best selling car, the Corolla, is the focus of another recall. Watch the video.

Following a series of reports about Toyota's recent recall woes, a conglomerate of dealers covering five Southeastern states including North Carolina has pulled its advertising from ABC stations. 

Locally, ABC 11 general manager John Idler confirmed that the decision by Southeast Toyota affected the station, but he declined to offer specifics about how much advertising was canceled.

According to the New York Times, Southeast Toyota's marketing firm attributed the decision to pull the ads to "excessive stories on the Toyota issues." Southeast Toyota represents 173 dealers in Florida, Georgia,
Alabama, and North and South Carolina. The company's Web site says those dealers sell approximately 20 percent of all Toyotas sold in the United States.

Triangle dealers tell us that they buy advertising time themselves in addition to the ads run by Southeast Toyota, so you may still see some of their independent ads despite the move by SET.

Bruised from the imaging wrecking recalls, Toyota has launched its PR comeback campaign. We'll see if consumers buy it. Watch the Toyota "Commitment" television commercial on the jump.