1Toyota Motor Corporation, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1987, is Japan's leading automobile manufacturer and one of the largest in the world.
The company was started in the early 1930s by Kiichiro Toyoda, the son of a successful inventor of an automatic weaving loom. In the face of widespread opinion that u.s. and other foreign auto makers were too firmly established and too far ahead technologically, Toyoda determined to catch up to them. He and a small team labored patiently to perfect an auto design that used Japanese components and technology. The team's first prototype was completed in 1935, and two years later the company was established. Today Toyota is principally engaged in the manufacture of passenger cars, trucks, and buses. The company also produces prefabricated housing, forklifts, and other industrial vehicles. In addition, it is moving into such new business areas as the provision of telecommunications services. Toyota's consolidated subsidiaries carry out a wide variety of production and sales activities, mainly related to the parent company's manufacturing operations. Toyota currently operates manufacturing plants in Japan and production and assembly facilities in twenty foreign countries. Its products are marketed in more than 140 countries through an extensive network of distributors and dealers. In fifty years Toyota has grown from a small automotive project set up in the corner of a loom factory to a corporation that has helped transform the global automotive industry and has firmly established itself as a world leader.
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