Toyota Motor Corporation was officially formed in 1933 as a division of the family owned Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, under the stewardship of the founder's son Kiichiro Toyoda. The capital for the Toyota automobile division was from a sale of an automatic loom that stopped when there was a problem with it, to a British company.
Early Beginnings
Toyota Motor Corporation was originally Toyoda Motor Corporation, after the owner's name. Toyoda was converted into the Toyota to erase the notion that the company was a farming company, since Toyoda literally meant "fertile rice paddies". And so in August 1937, Toyota Motor Corporation was registered as a business.
The first Toyota passenger car was the Model AA, a model significantly cheaper than Ford and GM cars. From 1947, Toyota cars were sold with the name "Toyopet" – having models such as Toyopet SA, Toyopet Crown and Toyopet Corona. When Toyota started importing their cars in the United States of America, "Toyopet" was dropped in American markets, but was still kept in other markets. It was in the mid-1960s that "Toyopet" was completely dropped.
Toyota Australia
Toyota Land Cruisers were first imported on Australian soil by Thiess Toyota back in 1958. A production plant was built in 1963, in Port Melbourne, giving way to full production of Toyota automobiles. In 1994, the Port Melbourne plant was closed and Toyota Motor Corporation Australia (TMCA) transferred to Altona. TMCA has since boosted its growth and has even expanded putting up stores for Toyota parts in Perth. This expansion is proportionate to the growth of the number of Toyota dealers in Perth.
Toyota Hybrids
Toyota is one of the largest manufacturers of hybrid vehicles and has been very active in pushing such vehicles into the market on a consistent basis. Toyota is also the first company to commercially produce hybrid vehicles, an example being the Toyota Prius. Currently, Toyota has four hybrid vehicles under its belt – the Prius, Auris, Highlander, and Camry. As of the early quarter of this year, hybrid sales have reached the 4 million mark worldwide. This is quite an achievement for the automobile manufacturer, who produced the first hybrid vehicle in the Coaster Hybrid EV passenger bus (Japan), followed by the Prius a few months after. To date, the worldwide sales of the Prius have topped 1 million. And with four different styles of the Prius, global sales would only prove to increase within the next year or so.
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