FAW Toyota to lift '09 sales 8% to 380,000 units

Shanghai, February 13 (Gasgoo.com) FAW Toyota Motor Ltd, the joint venture between China's FAW Group and Japanese carmaker Toyota Motor, has planned to raise its Toyota car sales in China by 8% to 380,000 units this year, said sina.com yesterday, citing the company's top executive.

FAW Toyota vice general manager Wang Fachang said that the company bucked the auto market downturn and sold 350,000 vehicles in 2008, up 25% year on year, gaining 6.5% market share in China's passenger car sector to become the country's No.4 automaker (after FAW-VW, Shanghai-VW and Shanghai-GM). In the fourth quarter of 2008, most Chinese carmakers saw their sales drop amid the financial crisis.

The sales growth of the joint venture in 2008 is mostly attributed to the Corolla and Corolla EX models, which sold 217,000 units together last year (compared with 52,248 units in 2007) as the best-selling models in China's high-end small car segment. Tianjin FAW said it will produce the company's first A-class car based on Toyota's ninth-generation Corolla platform.

The Chinese auto market will continue to slow down in the first half of 2009 due to the lingering global economic recession. However, industry executives and experts foresee a gradual recovery in the second half. And as the Chinese government will issue more incentives to boost the auto industry, FAW Toyota expects to sell 380,000 cars, or 8% more, this year.

Toyota Motor Corp expects to raise its auto sales in China by 20% to more than 700,000 units this year. The Japanese carmaker has included its good-selling RAV4 model in a series of SUV models of FAW Toyota's product lineup for the China market. The RAV4 SUV will be built by the joint venture and launched in the first half of 2009.