Toyota’s global sales make firm comeback

TOKYO - The Associated Press

Toyota says its April-June profit zoomed to 290.3 billion yen ($3.7 billion) from 1.1 billion yen on a jump in global sales as the Japanese automaker makes a comeback from a disaster plagued 2011.

Toyota Motor Corp. said Aug. 3 its quarterly sales soared nearly 60 percent to 5.5 trillion yen ($70.5 billion), rebounding from a sales crash that all Japanese automakers suffered after the earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan in March last year.

Toyota said quarterly vehicle sales nearly doubled from the year before to 2.3 million vehicles as sales rose in North America, Japan, the rest of Asia, Europe and other regions, including Africa and South America.

Toyota said it carried out cost cuts totaling 70 billion yen ($897 million) for the quarter. The auto giant raised its global sales target for year to 9.76 million vehicles amid recovery.

The Japanese firm last year lost the title of world’s biggest carmaker -- a spot it had held between 2008 and 2010 -- following a slump in production and sales owing to the disasters, floods in Thailand and the strong yen. In the fiscal year to March 2012, Toyota’s net profit tumbled 30.5 percent to 283.56 billion yen. Despite the currency and disaster-related struggles, Toyota has also been forced into damage control in recent years after recalling millions of vehicles since 2009 over safety defects.