Toyota Australia just warming up

Japan's biggest car maker has grand plans to shift 60,000 cars in just three months
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Market leader Toyota has ambitious plans to recoup most of the sales it lost in the first half of the year in the wake of the Japanese tsunami – but concedes it will likely not eclipse the 200,000 mark for the first time in 8 years.

Fresh stock has already started to arrive now that all Toyota factories are running at or above normal capacity. But now the car maker has revealed even bolder plans.

"In the last quarter, you watch us. We're going to deliver 60,000 cars in three months," the executive director of sales and marketing at Toyota Australia, Dave Buttner, told motoring.com.au. "We'll do close to 19,000 cars next month and then we really ramp up."

Toyota was so badly affected by interruptions to supply in the wake of the Japanese tsunami in March that Holden overtook the company on two individual months – May and June.

But Toyota regained the monthly sales lead in July and clawed back more ground last month, posting almost 16,000 sales. That represented an improved market share of 18 per cent, but was still at least two percentage points short of Toyota's average running rate in recent years.

Buttner said Toyota initially had a target of 220,000 sales this calendar year – less than its best result of 238,983 set in 2008 but more than the tally of 214,718 set in 2010.

The company has since revised its target and expects to come in below 200,000 for the first time since 2003, when 186,370 sales were recorded.

"I don't think we'll do over 200,000 because we lost too much on the back of the tsunami, and the ability to build the stock to beat 200,000 is going to be too difficult," Buttner told motoring.com.au. "I think we'll still do around the mid 190,000s."

Unlike his counterparts at luxury car makers, Buttner says the Australian new-car market is still strong and he repeated his market forecast of 1 million sales this year.

"We don't see any reason why it'd be under a million," he said. "There's a lot of speculation that [interest] rates will go down before the end of the year.

"That's always encouraging for people because they've been holding back on their spending because they've been concerned that interest rates might hike."


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