Toyota is the world's largest car manufacturer by revenue, production, sales and profit taking the position from General Motors who held it for 76 years. Toyota owns and operates Toyota, Lexus and Scion, has a majority shareholding in Daihatsu Motors and Hino Motors and has minority shareholdings in Fuji Heavy Industries, Isuzu Motors and in Yamaha.
The company was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda as a diversification to his father's company Toyota. It also creates robots besides automobiles.
During the war, Toyota built trucks for the army. But after the war, they started commercial passenger car production again in 1947 with the model SA. The quality and production principles on which Toyota is based originated in an education program from the United States Army. In 1957 the Toyota Crown became the first Japanese car to be exported to the United States and Toyota's American and Brazilian divisions, Toyota Motor Sales Inc. and Toyota do Brazil S.A., were also established. Toyota began to expand in the 1960s with a new research and development facility and a presence in Thailand. The first Toyota built outside Japan was in April 1963, in Port Melbourne in Australia.
The fuel crises of the 70s were a boon to Japanese companies in the States. Small cars in the American market were seen as entry level and were not produced to any great quality. The Japanese had long demanded high quality cars that were economic to run, so Japanese manufacturers were in an excellent position to fill the US demand. This began an expansion of Japanese firms, most Notably Toyota who joined forces with GM and started their luxury car division, Lexus.
Toyota now has factories all over the world, manufacturing or assembling vehicles for local markets: Japan, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Brazil, and more recently Pakistan, India, Argentina, Czech Republic, Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Venezuela, and the Philippines.
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Check Toyota insurance groups - select a model to start
Whether you currently own a Toyota or you are considering buying a model from
the Toyota range, it helps if you understand insurance groups and how they affect
your premium.
Insurance group ratings take into account performance, security, damage and parts costs, new
car values, availability of body shells and repair costs and times. What you'll typically
find is that cars in lower insurance groups attract a lower premium, whilst cars in higher
insurance groups attract a higher premium - usually because they are high performance models
or have high repair or replacement costs. Just choose a model to check its insurance group ratings.