Toyota Production Down Worldwide Again

Quoting heavily from a Deutsche Presse-Agentur article, the website reports, “The world's largest automaker said it manufactured 613,169 units in October, 13.6 per cent less than a year earlier. Toyota reduced output by 7 per cent overseas and by 22.4 per cent domestically, the company said in a statement.”

That information would dovetail with November sales projections first posted on TorqueNews.com earlier this week, according to information provided by TrueCar.com: “All manufacturers except Toyota [which includes Lexus and Scion] are seeing significant increases compared to last November. Hyundai, including Kia, is up 45 percent while Toyota saw sales drop 1.7 percent compared to November 2009.”

Savvy manufacturers are learning to cut production instead of forcing dealers to buy more vehicles, as was the case for years with Detroit manufacturers. That’s bad for business because it saddles dealers with high inventory loan costs, forces manufacturers to offer huge incentives to move product and that eventually hurts new and used car values, and forces the manufacturers to lose billions of dollars.

Yet, Toyota may be crying all the way to the bank. According to Deutsche Press-Agentur report, “Profits rose in the first half of the business year through March 2011, also helped along by cost cutting measures, the carmaker said last month. Second-quarter net profit more than quadrupled year-on-year to 98.7 billion yen (1.17 billion dollars). Toyota revised upwards its full-year profit forecast to 350 billion yen, but a sizeable chunk of that profit has already been earned in the first months of the year. “