History of the Toyota Motor Corporation

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Toyota is one of the Japanese "big three", which includes Nissan Motors and Honda Motors. Toyota is challenging American automobile manufacturers with high success in domestic American sales. Toyota's headquarters is located in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. Toyota also provides financial services through its subsidiary, Toyota Financial Services, and participates in other lines of business. It manufactures vehicles sold in the United States under the brand names Toyota, Scion, and Lexus. Toyota also owns majority stakes in Daihatsu and Hino, and 8.7% of Fuji Heavy Industries, which manufactures Subaru vehicles

As of 2005, Toyota, combined with its half-owned subsidiary Daihatsu Motor Company, produced 8.54 million vehicles, about 500,000 fewer than the number produced by GM that year. In July of 2006, Toyota passed Ford in selling cars, although Ford regained its lead over Toyota in the following month and lost it again due to heavy gas prices. Toyota has a large market share in the United States, Europe and Africa and is the market leader in Australia. It has significant market shares in several fast-growing Southeast Asian countries.

In the Fortune Global 500, it is the 7th largest company in the world outpacing Ford Motor Company in all listings in terms of revenue and growth and in the 2006 Forbes Global 2000 it is the 12th largest company in the world. It has been consistently gaining market share in the United States, while shrinking sales for Ford and General Motors in the United States.

Its slogan is "Moving forward," or "It's time to move forward." in the United States. This slogan is also used in various other countries in the world. In some countries such as Australia, the slogan is "Oh what a feeling!" which was Toyota's famous slogan in the US during the 1980s.

Toyota Motor Corporation began in September 1933 when Toyoda Automatic Loom created a new division devoted to the production of automobiles under the direction of the founder's son, Kiichiro Toyoda. Soon thereafter, the division produced its first Type A Engine in 1934, which was used in the first Model A1 passenger car in May 1935 and the G1 truck in August 1935. Production of the Model AA passenger car started in 1936.

Although the Toyota Group is best known today for its cars, it is still in the textile business and still makes automatic looms (which are now fully computerized), and electric sewing machines which are available worldwide.

Toyota Motor Company was established as an independent company in 1937. Although the founding family name is Toyoda, the company name was changed in order to signify the separation of the founders' work life from home life, to simplify the pronunciation, and to give the company a happy beginning. Toyota is considered luckier than Toyoda in Japan, where eight is regarded as a lucky number, and eight is the number of strokes it takes to write Toyota in Katakana.

During the Pacific War the company was dedicated to truck production for the Imperial Army. Because of severe shortages in Japan, military trucks were kept as simple as possible. For example, the trucks had only one headlight on the center of the hood. The war ended shortly before a scheduled Allied bombing run on the Toyota factories in Aichi.

Commercial passenger car production started in 1947 with the model SA. In 1950 a separate sales company Toyota Motor Sales Co. was established (which lasted until July 1982). In April 1956 the Toyopet dealer chain was established.

Toyota has factories all over the world, manufacturing or assembling vehicles for local markets, including the Corolla. Toyota has manufacturing or assembly plants in the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, and more recently Pakistan, India, Argentina, Czech Republic, Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, China and Venezuela.

The first Toyota built outside of Japan was a Land Cruiser FJ-251, built in São Paulo, Brazil in May 1959.

Toyota invests a great amount of research into cleaner-burning vehicles such as the Toyota Prius, based on technology such as the Hybrid Synergy Drive, although the added costs of hybrid technology do not result in any cost savings for many years. In 2002, Toyota successfully road-tested a new version of the RAV4 which ran on a Hydrogen fuel cell. Scientific American called the company its Business Leader of the Year in 2003 for commercializing an affordable hybrid car.

In 2003, Toyota brought two of its popular cars from Japan (including the bB) to America, and created a new badge, called Scion, meaning a descendant or heir. These cars are targeted towards the young, and young-at-heart. They are meant to be tuned up or be used as simple road cars. Both models, the xA (known in Japan as the Toyota ist) and xB (known in Japan as the Toyota bB) are powered by a 1.5L DOHC I4 engine. A third model, the Scion tC, was introduced in 2004. They are all typically low priced and are affordable. Instead of importing an existing model from Japan as was done with the xA and xB, the tC was designed specifically for the North American market as a Toyota Celica replacement, using the four-cylinder engine and transmissions from the Toyota Camry, and the basic platform of the European Toyota Avensis. Toyota is also famous in the industry for its manufacturing philosophy, called the Toyota Production System. This system is copied worldwide by many manufacturing companies.

In 2005, Toyota was the 4th largest auto company in the world in terms of sales with $135.82 billion—it trailed General Motors with $185.52 billion, Ford with $164.20 billion, and Daimler-Chrylser with $157.13 billion. As of May 2006, Toyota was able to catch Daimler-Chrysler for 3rd place in total sales in the United States. In June 2006, Toyota surpassed Ford in terms of total vehicle sales in the U.S., although Ford regained its spot over Toyota in the following month and lost it again since.