Toyota raises global sales forecast by 3%, report says

TOKYO (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp. has raised its global sales forecast for the 2009 calendar year by 3 percent to 6.7 million cars, the Tokyo Shimbun daily reported on Saturday, in the latest sign of a nascent recovery in auto demand.
Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is also raising its global production by 8 percent to 6.45 million vehicles for 2009, thanks to the effect of government subsidies and tax incentives on new fuel-efficient cars, the paper said.

Officials at Toyota could not be reached for comment.

Toyota has been struggling with its worst downturn since it was founded in 1937, but its domestic sales have picked up recently, climbing 9 percent in August from the same month last year.

Japan in April began offering as much as 250,000 yen ($2,789) in subsidies to buyers replacing older cars with low-emission cars, part of the country’s largest-ever economic stimulus package.

Toyota has asked the new government to extend the deadline for these subsidies by two years to the end of March 2012.

Toyota won’t raise prices on new 4Runner

DETROIT (Reuters) — Toyota Motor Corp. will not raise prices on the new version of its 4Runner SUV in a bid to shore up sputtering sales of the vehicle, dealers briefed on the plan this week said.
Toyota is due to unveil the all-new 4Runner at an event in Dallas next week.

The new SUV, which is manufactured at Toyota’s Tahara plant in Japan, is scheduled to go on sale in the United States in late October.

A Toyota spokesman declined to comment on the pricing of the new vehicle.

The 2009 model-year 4Runner has been Toyota’s worst-performing vehicle in U.S. sales at a time when industry-wide, sales have been in a slump.

Sales of the current version of the 4Runner, which has a starting sticker price of $28,640, have fallen 63 percent through August.

Toyota dealers who attended a meeting with senior Toyota management this week in Las Vegas were told that pricing on the 4Runner would be unchanged, two of the dealers told Reuters.

Typically automakers raise prices and add features to new vehicles.

But Toyota used its annual meeting of dealers to unveil a range of steps intended to reverse a recent decline in sales and take back market share, dealers at the meeting said.

Those included steps to make leasing more affordable because of higher resale values and the decision to hold the line on pricing for the new SUV, the dealers said.

The 4Runner is one of seven SUVs Toyota sells in the United States. Sales for that group of vehicles is down 26 percent through August. Only the relatively small Rav4 has shown growth among Toyota SUVs, up 1 percent.

Toyota’s overall sales are down 29 percent this year in the United States, the automaker’s largest single market.