Toyota global sales plunge 21.8% in Nov

In more bad news for Japan's auto industry, Toyota said today that its global vehicle sales plunged 21.8 per cent in November, the biggest drop in eight years.

Rival Nissan said its worldwide sales sank 19.8 per cent and global production nose-dived a record 33.7 per cent on depressed sales in the United States.

The dismal data comes two days after Toyota, Japan's biggest automaker, predicted that this fiscal year it would report its first operating loss in 70 years.

Toyota Motor Corp, running neck-and-neck against industry leader General Motors Corp in global vehicle sales, sold 6,18,000 automobiles in November, down 21.8 per cent from last November.

That's the biggest year-on-year slide since Toyota began tracking comparable data in January 2000. Such declines never reached 20 per cent in the past, the company said.

Nissan Motor Co, Japan's third-biggest car manufacturer, said its global production plummeted 33.7 per cent to 2,22,212, the largest drop since it started compiling such data in 1985. Worldwide sales dropped nearly 20 per cent to 2,37,653 in the month.

"Weak demand in the US and Europe pressured our production. A slump in domestic output also contributed to the record fall," said Nissan spokeswoman Yuko Matsuda.

Japan's No 2 carmaker, Honda Motor Co, also said Wednesday its global production in November tumbled 9.9 percent, the biggest fall in five years, to 326,176 vehicles. Honda does not provide global vehicle sales.

For the January-November period, Toyota sold 8.356 million vehicles around the world. Detroit-based GM has not released such figures.