From September 1947, Toyota's small-sized vehicles were sold under the name"Toyopet"The first vehicle sold under this name was the Toyopet SA,
However, when Toyota eventually entered the American market in 1957 with the Crown,the name was not well received due to connotations of Toys and pets.
The name wassoon dropped for the American market but continued in other markets until the mid1960's.
Company overview
The Toyota Motor Company was awarded its first Japanese Quality Control Award at thestart of the 1980s and began participating in a wide variety of Motorsports.In 1982, the Toyota Motor Company and Toyota Motor Sales merged into one company,the Toyota Motor Corporation. Two years later, Toyota entered into a joint venture withGM called NUMMI, the
New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc,
operating an automobilemanufacturing plant in Fremont, California. The factory was an old General Motors plantthat had been closed for two years. Toyota then started to establish new brands at the endof the 1980s, with the launch of their luxury divisionLexusin 1989.In the 1990s Toyota began to branch out from producing mostly compact cars by addingmany larger and more luxurious vehicles to its lineup, including a full sized pickup. Withover 30 million sold, theCorollais one of the most popular and best selling cars in theworld.Toyota also began production of the world's best selling hybrid car, thePrius, in1997.In 2002, Toyota managed to enter aFormula Oneworks team and establish joint ventureswith Frenchmotoring companiesCitroënand Peugeot, a year after Toyota started
producing cars in France.Toyota ranked eight on Forbes 2000 list of worlds leading companies for the year 2005.The company was number one in global automobile sales for the first quarter of 2008.
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