Japanese Car Manufacturers On Road To Recovery
Tuesday, 27. September 2011
There are some encouraging signs coming from the Japanese manufacturers with regard to recovery following the tsunami. Toyota and Nissan are working close to capacity now to fulfil orders and to replenish inventory of cars and parts depleted as a result of the March 11th disaster. Whilst car production was ready to roll very quickly it was a shortage of parts that caused the real problem. It only takes one missing part to completely halt the production of a car. Honda, as recently reported, is still suffering badly through the shortage of parts.
Toyota announced that their global output for August was up by 10.6% compared to August last year and their domestic output up by 11.9%, the first increase since the disaster.
Nissan seems to be a big winner with global output up 23.9% in August although domestic production was down slightly. Honda’s production was down 9.3% in August whilst Mitsubishi, Suzuki and Mazda all reported declines also.
Overall production increased by 1.7% to 670,000 vehicles, the first increase since September 2010. The record high Yen has affected car export profits and whilst production is at full tilt it is expected to drop back to 70% once the backlog caused by the tsunami has been removed.
Japanese manufacturers are not known for heavy discounting but analysts predict that extra support will be provided by manufacturers anxious to win back their market share. So watch this space for what will hopefully be some spanking deals. By Graham Hill
Related articles
- Toyota global production bounces back in August (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Ellie Says:
Its nice to see that they are slowly being able to pull themselves back together after the horrible events of March 11th!