According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Toyota executives later used the movie as an example of how not to manage Americans.
Ron Howard said in looking back on his career, one of the mistakes he realized he made, was when he cast Japanese American actors that could speak Japanese, they couldn't speak the language as well and Howard didn't really test their fluency. When Howard was working with Japanese actors, they pointed out that the language spoken by the Japanese American cast wasn't very good and by that point, Howard had already shot 90% of the movie. Howard called this a rookie mistake that he would never make again.
The make and models of the automobiles manufactured at the motor corporation in the film are 1985 Fiat Regata ('Assan' 1a series [149]) and 1986 Fiat Spazio ('Assan' [147]), both produced by Sevel Argentina under license of Fiat. In real life, one of the locations, where the assembly line and the automobiles were filmed, was the Sevel plant in Argentina.
The park scene was filmed in Beaver, Pennsylvania. The movie crew built the gazebo especially for the movie, and left this as a gift to the city.
Stevie Ray Vaughan provides guitar work in this movie, which is part of the original music. His brother Jimmie Vaughan plays guitar on "Tuff Enuff" which is one of the most prominent songs in the movie.