Toyota: On the Way to Number One
The Toyota Motor Co. Ltd was first established in 1937 as a spin-off from Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (the name would be changed to Toyota after World War II; both are good transliterations), one of the world's leading manufacturers of weaving machinery. Toyoda's car operations were positioned in the hands of Kiichiro Toyoda, Sakichi Toyoda's son. The first Toyoda car, the Type A1, was 62 horsepower, with a maximum speed of 62 mph. Toyoda Motor Company was split off from the loom works in 1937. Growth was slow from 1936 to 1943, only 1,757 cars were made ? 1,404 sedans and 353 phaetons (model AB), but Toyoda found true success building trucks.
Toyota started selling cars in the United States in 1958, but it was not until 1964 that this first Americanized Toyota came out, the Toyota Corona PT20, sold in the US as the Tiara. Sales hit 6,400 in 1965 and reached 71,000 by 1968, nearly doubling each year until 1971 when Toyota was selling over 300,000 vehicles per year.
In 1959, the company opened its first production plant outside Japan in Brazil. From that point forward, Toyota maintained a philosophy of localizing both production and design of its products. This helped to build long-term relationships with local suppliers and local labor. Part of this also means that Toyota does not merely build vehicles overseas, but also designs them there, with a network of both design and R&D facilities in North America and Europe.
Today, Toyota is the world's second largest manufacturer of automobiles in both unit sales and in net sales. In the United States, Toyota has roughly double the sales of Honda. It produces over 5.5 million vehicles per year, equivalent to one every six seconds.
Among the general public, Toyota is mo ...