Automobile toyota
Toyota Motor Corporation is a multinational corporation headquartered
in Japan, and is currently the world's largest automaker. Toyota
employs approximately 316,000 people worldwide.
In 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it created
its first product Type A engine and in 1936 its first passenger
car the Toyota AA. The company was eventually founded by Kiichiro
Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries
to create automobiles. Toyota also owns and operates Lexus and Scion
brands and has a majority shareholding stake in Daihatsu and Hino
Motors, and minority shareholdings in Fuji Heavy Industries, Isuzu
Motors, and Yamaha Motors. The company includes 522 subsidiaries.
Toyota is headquartered in Toyota City and Nagoya (both in Aichi),
and in Tokyo. In addition to manufacturing automobiles, Toyota provides
financial services through its division Toyota Financial Services
and also creates robots. Toyota Industries and Finance divisions
form the bulk of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates
in the world.
On May 8, 2009, Toyota reported a record annual net loss of US$4.4
billion, making it the latest automobile maker to be battered by
the 2007-2009 credit crisis.
History
Toyota started in 1933 as a division of Toyoda Automatic Loom
Works devoted to the production of automobiles under the direction
of the founder's son, Kiichiro Toyoda. Its first vehicles were
the A1 passenger car and the G1 in 1935. Toyota Motor Co. was
established as an independent and separate company in 1937.
Company overview
The Toyota Motor Company was awarded its first Japanese Quality
Control Award at the start of the 1980s and began participating
in a wide variety of Motorsports. Due to the 1973 oil crisis consumers
in the lucrative U.S. market began turning to small cars with
better fuel economy. American car manufacturers had considered
small economy cars to be an "entry level" product, and
their small vehicles were made to a low level of quality in order
to keep the price low.
In 1982, the Toyota Motor Company and Toyota Motor Sales merged
into one company, the Toyota Motor Corporation. Two years later,
Toyota entered into a joint venture with GM called NUMMI, the
New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc, operating an automobile manufacturing
plant in Fremont, California. The factory was an old General Motors
plant that had been closed for two years. Toyota then started
to establish new brands at the end of the 1980s, with the launch
of their luxury division Lexus in 1989.
In the 1990s Toyota began to branch out from producing mostly
compact cars by adding many larger and more luxurious vehicles
to its lineup, including a full sized pickup, the T100 (and later
the Tundra), several lines of SUVs, a sport version of the Camry,
known as the Camry Solara, and the Scion brand, a group of several
affordable, yet sporty, automobiles targeted specifically to young
adults. Toyota also began production of the world's best selling
hybrid car, the Prius, in 1997.
With a major presence with Europe, due to the success of Toyota
Team Europe, the corporation decided to set up TMME, Toyota Motor
Europe Marketing & Engineering, to help market vehicles in
the continent. Two years later, Toyota set up a base in the United
Kingdom, TMUK, as the company's cars had become very popular among
British drivers. Bases in Indiana, Virginia and Tianjin were also
set up. In 1999, the company decided to list itself on the New
York and London Stock Exchange.
In 2001, Toyota's Toyo Trust and Banking merged to form the UFJ,
United Financials of Japan, which was accused of corruption by
the Japan's government for making bad loans to alleged Yakuza
crime syndicates with executives accused of blocking Financial
Service Agency inspections. The UFJ was listed among Fortune Magazine's
largest money-losing corporations in the world, with Toyota's
chairman serving as a director. At the time, the UFJ was one of
the largest shareholders of Toyota. As a result of Japan's banking
crisis, the UFJ was merged again to become Mitsubishi UFJ Financial
Group.
In 2002, Toyota managed to enter a Formula One works team and
establish joint ventures with French motoring companies Citro?n
and Peugeot, a year after Toyota started producing cars in France.
Toyota ranked eight on Forbes 2000 list of worlds leading companies
for the year 2005. The company was number one in global automobile
sales for the first quarter of 2008.
On December 7, 2004, a U.S. press release was issued stating that
Toyota would be offering Sirius Satellite Radios. However, as
late as January 27, 2007, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite
radio kits were not available for Toyota factory radios. While
the press release enumerated nine models, only limited availability
existed at the dealer level in the U.S. As of 2008, all Toyota
and Scion models have either standard or available XM radio kits.
Major Lexus dealerships have been offering satellite radio kits
for Lexus vehicles since 2005, in addition to factory-equipped
satellite radio models.
In 2007, Toyota released an update of its full size truck, the
Tundra, produced in two American factories, one in Texas and one
in Indiana. "Motor Trend" named the Tundra "Truck
of the Year," and the 2007 Toyota Camry "Car of the
Year" for 2007. It also began the construction of two new
factories, one to build the RAV4 in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada
and the other to build the Toyota Prius in Blue Springs, Mississippi,
USA. This plant was originally intended to build the Toyota Highlander,
but Toyota decided to use the plant in Princeton, Indiana, USA
instead. The company has also found recent success with its smaller
models - the Corolla and Yaris - as gas prices have risen rapidly
in the last few years.
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