FAW Toyota still aims to sell 580000 vehicles in 2013, will adapt to market changes

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai May 6) - FAW Toyota will change to adapt to new market trends, a report appearing in the National Business Daily cited the joint venture's Executive Vice President Tian Congming as saying. Mr. Tian made the comments at the recently concluded Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition, where he confirmed that the joint venture will not reduce its 2013 target of 580,000 vehicles sales.

"Everyone is saying that Toyota is changing," Mr. Tian (pictured above) proudly stated. "In the past Toyota has been critiqued as excessively conservative and moderate," Mr. Tian acknowledged. He was quick to add though, that the new Toyota is aiming to attract a younger and more mainstream segment of the market with the launch of several new models.

As with many other Japanese brands, Toyota sales in China suffered last year. Despite this, FAW Toyota was able to fulfill its 2012 target of 490,550 vehicle sales. Later in March of this year, Toyota brought the 86 sports car (pictured below) to China and announced the new Ranz own brand, whose models will be manufactured in Tianjin. Toyota also has plans to bring over brand new versions of the RAV4 and Vios to the country sometime later this year. FAW Toyota was also keen to announce that it will strengthen sales of its current models, including the current generation RAV4 and Corolla.

Despite overall growth in the Chinese passenger automobile market reaching 25 percent last quarter, sales of Japanese brands, including FAW Toyota, fell 15 percent. Many analysts believe that Japanese manufacturers have not fully recovered from the massive sales declines they suffered last year. FAW Toyota's sales for the quarter totaled 115,000 units, which Mr. Tian pointed out is slightly better than other Japanese brands. "Even if this isn't an especially good performance, it is still acceptable," he commented.