Friday, January 08, 1999
Toyota VP predicts more record sales for Camry
BY MIKE BOYER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Toyota's Camry was America's top-selling car in 1998 for the second year in a row and Don Esmond, top salesman for the Toyota brand, wants to make it three.
“We'll sell every (Camry) we can build, and hopefully we'll sell more than we did last year,” he said Thursday during a stop at Toyota Motor Manufacturing's North American headquarters in Erlanger.
A problem is that Toyota's Georgetown, Ky., plant is projecting about 4 percent lower production this year than 1998, when it produced 474,588 Camrys, Avalons and Sienna minivans.
Toyota is forecasting lower production out of the 7,800-employee Georgetown plant because of a major model changeover for the Avalon and slower demand from recession-plagued Japan for the upscale car. Toyota produced 83,000 Avalons and 95,000 Sienna minivans at Georgetown last year.
That raises the possibility that Toyota might increase Japanese imports of the Camry to meet its sales objective. But Mr. Esmond, vice president and general manager of Toyota Motor Sales' Toyota Division, dodged that politically sensitive issue.
“Where the production goes isn't my concern,” he said. “I sell them. I don't determine where they come from.”
Overall, Mr. Esmond said, the Toyota division is forecasting 1999 sales of 1.23 million vehicles, up from 1.20 million in 1998. But he said Toyota “is revising that up a bit” based on the unit's strong sales in December. Camry fin ished 1998 with the best month in its history with sales of 55,050, up 24 percent from the same month last year.
Toyota's 1999 sales outlook will be helped by a couple new models.
The new full-sized Tundra pickup truck, produced in Princeton, Ind., will go on sale in the spring, and in the fall, Toyota will begin selling its new imported subcompact, the Echo, in North America.
Mr. Esmond said Toyota is projecting first-year sales of 50,000 to 60,000 for the Echo. Although Toyota plans to market versions of the Echo around the world, it has no plans to produce the car in North America, he said.
The Echo is the first of in a new line of Toyota vehicles aimed at the generation dubbed “NetGens,” buyers born since 1980.
By 2010, some 63 million “NetGens” will be of car-buying age, Mr. Esmond said.
“While we've done a good job of growing up with the baby boom generation,” he said, Toyota hasn't done as well attracting younger drivers.
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