Toyota is currently the third largest
car manufacturer in the world behind General Motors and Volkswagen.
Based in Japan, Toyota started off as a division of Toyoda Automatic
Loom Works by the founder's son, Kichiro Toyoda. The Japanese
Government was urging the company to produce automobiles as the
country needed cars due to their war in China.
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| Toyota Logo |
Toyoda began researching vehicles in
1929 by traveling to Europe and the United States to view production
of vehicles. Their first engine debuted in 1934, the first car in May
1935, and the first truck in August 1935. They tended to resemble
Dodges and Chevrolet at first.
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| 1935 Toyota Model G1 |
Toyota was established as a separate
company in 1937. Even though their name is Toyoda, the name was
changed to Toyota because eight it considered a lucky number in Japan
and in katakana, it takes eight strokes to write Toyota.
During the Second World War, the car
company made trucks for the Japanese Army. Toyota's factories were
lucky though; the war ended just before a bombing run was planned on
those plants. However, the end of the war proved trouble for the
fledgling company. The economy in Japan was horrid and even though
they introduced a new car, Toyota was on the edge of bankruptcy by
1949. They did manage to get loans as long as they made a separate
sales division, laid off workers, and lowered wages.
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| 2012 Toyota Camry - Pensacola, FL |
The response to this plan resulted in a
two month strike. In order to appease the union and allow the layoffs
and wage cuts to take place, the President resigned. The Korean War
ended up saving the company though. The United States military
ordered five thousand trucks from Toyota.
Toyota expanded in the 1960s with new
research and development factories. In 2008, Toyota suffered just
like American car companies. In response, they lowered production of
the Tundra, which had experience low sales, and increased production
of fuel efficient in demand cars such as the Prius, Corolla, and
Yaris.
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| 2014 Toyota FT-1 Concept |
Sources: 1935 Photo, Auto Pulze, http://www.autopulze.com/global-press-releases/toyota-motor-corporation-cumulative-vehicle-production-passes-200-million/ ; Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota
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