Toyota to expand sport-utility vehicle lineup

TOYOTA MOTOR Corp. plans to boost its lineup of sport-utility vehicles in view of a large shift in consumer preferences to such vehicles from sedans, Toyota officials said last week.

The automaker is also considering halting the manufacture of some sedans whose monthly output falls below 1000 vehicles, the officials said.

A Toyota executive said the company would instruct its engineers to place greater emphasis on the development of sport- utilities, saying, "We will use our limited business resources more efficiently in the fields of both development and sales."

Toyota President Hiroshi Okuda said, "We will take the wraps off about 10 new models" by the end of the 1997 calendar year to stir up consumer demand.

A Toyota spokesman said the company was aware of the fact that all the sport-utilities it unveiled in the January-June period of 1997 have enjoyed greater-than-expected sales when compared with sales performances of other types of vehicles it unveiled at the same time.

As for the sedan sector, Toyota plans to start marketing a "hybrid sedan" powered by both an electric motor and a combustion engine, jointly consuming about 50 percent less fuel than Toyota's conventional gasoline cars of the same size, they said.

But the firm's ongoing drive to place many new models in the market in a short period is placing great strains on engineers, a Toyota executive acknowledged, saying, "Our engineers are saying they are being given too many assignments."

The inability of Toyota engineers to push across-the-board development efforts for all vehicle types is forcing the management to give up development hopes for some sedan and coupe models and halt production of others, they said.

Toyota is considering halting the manufacture of some streamlined sedans it calls "stylish sedans," they said.

Toyota sacrificed some space and passenger comfort in designing these models, which were popular during the late 1980s "bubble" economy period.

Toyota also plans to drop its marketing strategy of having separate groups of affiliated dealerships sell models which are mechanically the same but sold under different names through slight differences in appearance, they said.

But the company keeps in mind the possibility that consumers' preferences may suddenly sway to favor sedans or other vehicle models again away from sport-utilities, they said.

Therefore Toyota will not halt efforts to improve models "whose basic concepts and technological features are excellent" even if sales may be flagging, the executive said.

-- Kyodo