TOKYO, Feb 5 — Stunned at the loss of their pre-eminence in global sales, Japan’s car makers are looking to drum up new interest with a number of new releases.

Japan’s major manufacturers were hit globally by disruption to their production facilities and supply chains in the Great East Japan Earthquake of March last year, as well as the severe flooding that struck factories in Thailand later in the year. The strong yen was another factor that hurt exports.

Toyota Motor lost the position of the world’s number one carmaker in January when it announced its global group sales had fallen below the eight million mark in 2011. US giant General Motors took over at the top, with the sale of 9.03 million cars, followed by Germany’s Volkswagen with 8.16 million units.

Toyota has responded with the unveiling on Thursday of its “86” sports car, which the company says marks a revival of its tradition of developing sporty models.

The rear-wheel-drive coupe will be launched on April 6 in Japan with a price tag of ¥1.99 million (RM78,736) for the basic model, but rising to ¥3.05 million. The company expects to sell 1,000 of the cars a month domestically and will gradually introduce it to other markets in the coming months. Eventually, Toyota aims to sell as many as 40,000 units of the 86 globally.

“We have developed the 86 as we regret having dropped Toyota sports cars one after the other,” Akio Toyoda, president of the company, told press at the unveiling.

“As long as automobile fans exist, the world of sporty automobiles will absolutely not disappear,” he said.

The company has also had a very favourable response to the introduction of its latest hybrid model, the fuel-efficient Aqua compact. Orders for the car had reached 120,000 units by the end of January, 10 times the firm’s estimated monthly sales target.

The car has the best fuel efficiency in the world for a hybrid, according to Toyota, at 35.4 kilometres per liter, but the earliest delivery date for new orders will be July due to the high demand.

Similarly, Daihatsu Motor Co. has received more than 70,000 orders for its fuel-efficient Mira e:S minivehicle in the four months since it hit the market, well above the sales projection of 10,000 units a month.

Honda Motor Co. also appears to have bounced back in the North American market, experiencing an 8.8 per cent increase in sales during January. The company sold 83,009 vehicles, up from 76,269 in the same period of the previous year and a welcome recovery for one of the manufacturers hardest hit by the disasters of the last 12 months. — AFP/Relaxnews