Background Of Toyota

It was initiated by a productive inventor, Sakichi Toyoda, who was born on the fourteenth day of February, 1867. Toyoda grew up as the son of a poor carpenter, but is considered the “King of Japanese Inventors.” He is also believed to be the father of the Japanese industrial revolution. With his breakthrough invention of the automatic loom, Toyoda, took the resulting money to create the Toyota Motor Company. A huge contributing factor to the birth of this company was the support of the Japanese government during the war in Manchuria. The first engine was developed in 1934, and the first car and truck were constructed the following year. In the post-war year of 1945, Toyota began fast expansion after the authorization from the United States military to spawn peacetime production. At first, the main focus of the Japanese company were there manufacturing of trucks. The Toyopet, “the first truly popular Toyota car,” was built in 1947. In the proceeding five years the company built only two hundred and fifteen cars of this model. By 1955, they were fabricating 8,400 cars per year, a decade later the company ascended to 600,000 cars per year.

The internationalization of the company began in 1958, when Toyota started marketing cars in the United States. The first two vehicles imported to the U.S. were the Toyopet and Land Cruiser. Even though the Land Cruiser had better margins, the Toyopet set up for the strategy of a car modified specifically for the American market. We are very familiar with these models still today; they are the Avalon and the Camry. Brazil was the first country in which Toyota constructed a production plant outside of its national borders; this took place in the year of 1959. One very important philosophy the company went by was to localize both the production and the design of its vehicles. This philosophy developed long-term relationships with local suppliers and labor considering the adaptation of products to the locality of use, along with production being there as well. This action gave forth to the implementation of R&D and design facilities in North America and Europe.

The first truly Americanized Toyota was the Tiara, also known as the Toyota Corona PT20. This vehicle hit the market in 1964. The car could hold up to 6 people and had about ninety horses under the hood.