TOKYO -- Slumping sales in North America have taken a big bite out of Toyota's 2009 sales target, quashing plans for it to be the first automaker to sell 10 million vehicles a year.
President Katsuaki Watanabe slashed his ambitious 2009 forecast to 9.7 million vehicles from an earlier goal of 10.4 million. Stagnating U.S. sales were largely to blame.
Toyota Motor Corp. sees North American sales coming in at 2.70 million units in 2008 and languishing at the same level in 2009. The figures include Hino and Daihatsu vehicles.
By contrast, the Toyota group sold 2.83 million units in North America last year.
"The economic environment, crude oil prices as well as the material cost trend was not accurately forecasted by us, and we initially thought there would be a greater number of vehicles sold," Watanabe said here today while announcing the downward revision.
The more modest ambitions highlight how even the world's biggest and most profitable automaker has been stung by the U.S. meltdown. The automaker's strong operating profits in North America nearly vanished in the April-June quarter, plunging 98.9 percent.
Watanabe initially floated the 10.4 million sales target last year, before the subprime loan problem torpedoed demand in his company's biggest market. Hitting the goal would have made Toyota the first automaker to pass 10 million units.
Toyota also said it will slow production at plants in Great Britain and Poland in response to a downturn in Europe. The move echoes a similar one in the United States, where Toyota has idled production of Tundra pickups and Sequoia SUVs at two plants for three months.
In Europe, Toyota is dropping one of the two shifts at its Burnaston, England, assembly plant for five months, starting in the second half of September. The company also will suspend one of the two shifts at an engine plant in Poland from Sept. 15 through Nov. 7.
European sales are expected to fall 3.8 percent this year to 1.25 million units.
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