With Japan starting to rise from the ruins of last year's tsunami, Toyota has increased its expectations for global sales in 2012. The company is looking to put out 8.58 million new cars for sale, a 21 percent increase from 2011, when the company was hurt by natural disasters in Japan and Thailand.
The company had previously predicted 1.53 million vehicles to be sold in Japan this year but raised the estimate to 1.63, a 36 percent jump from the previous year, due to the areas in Japan and Thailand starting to recover. Toyota is still unlikely to regain its spot as the world's top automaker from General Motors, but the improvement is good news for the company, which had been the world's top manufacturer since 2008.
The Wall Street Journal said Toyota's sales forecast is much better than the overall industry's estimate of 19 percent industry-wide sales increases. Toyota has a bigger line of cars and models and more name recognition, so selling cars should come easier for it than other companies.
As Toyota looks to regain its footing in the automobile marketthose who need subprime auto loans may want to take a look at what kind of car they could get for a good price from the company.
