TOKYO (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Friday it would roll out eight compact car models tailored for emerging markets by 2015 in an attempt to catch up to front-runners such as Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and General Motors Co (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Toyota, which lost the crown as the world’s top automaker last year, is looking to reduce its dependence on the mature North American, European and Japanese markets. It wants to shift more of its weight to growth markets such as China, India and Brazil, where Volkswagen, GM and Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) have taken the lead.

The Japanese automaker aims to sell half of its vehicles in emerging markets by 2015, up from around 45 percent last year and 18.6 percent in 2000.

“In emerging markets, there are four or five automakers vying to take the lead in sales volumes,” Toyota Executive Vice President Yukitoshi Funo told reporters.

“Particularly in the Southeast Asian region, Volkswagen and others are looking to challenge our lead so we can’t be resting on our laurels,” he said.

Including the Etios model that it launched in India in December 2010, Toyota plans to introduce eight compact cars by 2015, targeting combined annual sales of more than 1 million vehicles in over 100 countries during that period.

The upcoming cars will be priced around 1 million yen ($12,600) or higher and produced in local markets such as India, Brazil and China. Toyota said it would aim to procure 100 percent of the cars’ components locally to lower costs – a move that would require a stronger R&D function in those markets.

TOKYO, May 23 (Reuters) – Mazda Motor Corp, maker of one of history’s most iconic two-seater convertibles, and Fiat SpA are teaming up to produce a new generation of sports cars to revive their flagging fortunes.

Automakers around the world have been forging partnerships to share the rising burden of research and development as governments tighten environmental and safety regulations, and to lower costs amid stiffer competition.

Japan’s fifth-largest car maker and Fiat have agreed in principle to develop and build two-seater sports cars for their respective Mazda and Alfa Romeo brands based on Mazda’s MX-5 model, the companies said in a statement. The deal does not include a capital tie-up.

Mazda has posted four straight years of losses as it has struggled with a strong yen, which makes its cars less competitive overseas. It builds most of its cars in Japan and exports almost 80 percent of that output.

The car maker is also keen to form project-based partnerships to get back on a revival path after losing its strategic partnership with Ford Motor Co.

While the deal would not bring significant immediate gains for Mazda, it will be positive long-term, especially if the collaboration deepens, some analysts said.

“I see this as positive news,” said UBS auto analyst Tatsuo Yoshida.

YOKOHAMA, Japan (Reuters) – Nissan Motor Co (7201.T: Quote, Profile, Research) posted on Friday a one-third jump in quarterly profit and projected a 28 percent rise in the year ahead driven by brisk sales momentum in most major markets and the launch of 10 new models around the world.

Nissan has outshone domestic rivals Honda Motor Co (7267.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research) in the past year as Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn has pushed aggressively into fast-growing markets such as China and Russia.

January-March operating profit at Japan’s No.2 automaker rose 33 percent to 118.1 billion yen $1.48 billion (918.45 million pounds), against an average estimate of 120 billion yen from 20 analysts polled in the past 90 days by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net profit for Nissan’s fourth-quarter grew 145 percent to 75.3 billion yen.

For the year to next March, Nissan projected an operating profit of 700 billion yen – the best since the global financial crisis – and net profit of 400 billion yen. Consensus forecasts from 26 analysts put the profit at 710.5 billion yen.

Nissan, valued at $44 billion and 43.4 percent-held by France’s Renault SA (RENA.PA: Quote, Profile, Research), has also recovered its supply chain faster than its competitors after last year’s earthquake and tsunami and widespread flooding in Thailand. It has also been more ruthless in replacing more of the parts for the cars it makes in Japan with imported components, taking advantage of the strong yen.

The automaker’s global sales grew 16 percent to a record 4.845 million vehicles in the business year ended March, handily beating the total industry’s 4.2 percent rise.

YOKOHAMA, Japan (Reuters) – Nissan Motor Co (7201.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) posted on Friday a one-third jump in quarterly profit and projected a 28 percent rise in the year ahead driven by brisk sales momentum in emerging markets.

January-March operating profit at Japan’s No.2 automaker rose 33 percent to 118.1 billion yen ($1.48 billion), against an average estimate of 120 billion yen from 20 analysts polled in the past 90 days by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net profit for Nissan’s fourth-quarter grew 145 percent to 75.3 billion yen.

For the year to next March, Nissan projected an operating profit of 700 billion yen and net profit of 400 billion yen.

Nissan has outshone domestic rivals Honda Motor Co (7267.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in the past year as CEO Carlos Ghosn has pushed aggressively into fast-growing markets such as China and Russia.

Nissan, valued at $44 billion and 43.4 percent-held by France’s Renault SA (RENA.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), has also recovered its supply chain faster than its competitors after last year’s earthquake and tsunami and widespread flooding in Thailand. It has also been more ruthless in replacing more of the parts for the cars it makes in Japan with imported components, taking advantage of the strong yen.

For the year to end-March, Nissan managed a slight rise, of 1.6 percent, in operating profit to 545.84 billion yen, compared with a 60 percent decline at Honda and 24 percent drop at Toyota.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) expects to treble its operating profit this year to more than $12.5 billion, its highest since the global financial crisis, as Japan’s top automaker recovers lost ground in markets from the United States to China.

Operating profit jumped more than five-fold in January-March to $3 billion, with all production centers back up and running after last year’s earthquake, tsunami and Thai floods disrupted supply chains and cost Toyota around 400,000 cars in lost output – roughly 9 weeks’ worth of U.S. sales.

With robust top-line growth a given in the current year – the company predicts operating profit of 1 trillion yen ($12.54 billion), in line with market forecasts – Toyota is looking to squeeze further cost cuts in a battle to offset a strong yen. Executives say they have gone back to a war on waste – or “muda” – a key component of its vaunted production system.

At a briefing on Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Satoshi Ozawa noted the “huge contribution from all the (cost-cutting) efforts we’ve been making.”

Toyota President Akio Toyoda, the 56-year-old grandson of the automaker’s founder, said everyone in the company had worked towards improving profitability, and “the focus on making good cars has translated into sales volumes and profits. That in turn is leading to investments for even better cars,” he said.

With U.S. dealerships humming again, Toyoda and his aides have sketched out a strategy aimed at stripping costs from everything – from production lines in Japan to Mississippi to the years of design and engineering that go into making new cars and parts.

The goal is to push up profit margins even as Toyota rides a wave of recovering demand while tapping into its tradition of incremental improvement – or “kaizen” – the corporate creed that once made it the world’s most feared and studied manufacturer.

TOKYO, May 9 (Reuters) – For three years, Akio Toyoda has had to steer Toyota Motor Corp through one crisis after another, from a damaging safety recall that took up to 10 million cars off the road to last year’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Now, the 56-year-old grandson of the automaker’s founder is ready to go on the offensive.

With Toyota’s U.S. dealerships humming again, Toyoda and his aides have sketched out a strategy in recent weeks aimed at stripping costs from everything – from production lines in Japan to Mississippi to the years of design and engineering that go into producing new vehicles and parts.

The goal is to push up profit margins even as Toyota rides a wave of recovering demand while tapping into its tradition of incremental improvement – or “kaizen” – the corporate creed that once made it the world’s most feared and studied manufacturing enterprise.

At stake is Toyota’s ability to keep building some 3 million vehicles a year in Japan – roughly triple the equivalent output at Nissan Motor and Honda Motor and about 40 percent of the cars and trucks Toyota builds globally.

The first down-payment on Toyota’s emerging plan comes on Wednesday with earnings for the just-ended fiscal year and its forecast for the current year.

Senior executives pull no punches about both the scope of the challenge Toyota faces and how it lost its way when demand was booming. In the key markets of China, Brazil, Russia and India, “we’ve let Volkswagen and Hyundai Motor take the lead,” Toyota Executive Vice President Atsushi Niimi said recently.

TOKYO, May 8 (Reuters) – Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd said it no longer expects to start building cars in China as part of a five-year growth plan that runs until March 2016, and lowered its global sales target for the final year by 50,000 vehicles.

The maker of Subaru cars had mapped out the plan in July last year, aiming to boost global sales by 40 percent to 900,000 vehicles by March 2016, driven in large part by a tripling in Chinese sales.

Fuji Heavy said on Tuesday that it would continue to import cars into China after an unsuccessful bid to obtain Chinese government approval for a joint venture with local car maker Chery Automobile Co Ltd to build Subaru cars there.

Foreign automakers are required to partner with a Chinese company to produce cars for the local market, and Beijing recently tightened the approval process to favour ventures that plan to make technologically advanced vehicles such as hybrids and electric cars. A Chinese tariff of 25 percent on imported cars makes it difficult to sell in large volumes.

“We haven’t given up on local production in China,” President and Chief Operating Officer Yasuyuki Yoshinaga told a news conference.

“We’ll keep waiting patiently for any progress,” he said, conceding that plans to start building in the world’s biggest car market next year were no longer realistic.

He did not give a new target timeframe for China production.

TOKYO, April 27 (Reuters) – Honda Motor Co is set to end a five-quarter drop in operating profits and forecast a triple-digit surge in annual earnings after a 2011 hammered by the yen’s record strength, natural disasters and a crisis of reputation in its key U.S. market.

On top of being the last Japanese car maker to get its supply chain in order after a massive earthquake and tsunami in March last year, Honda was alone in having one of its factories inundated by Thailand’s floods in October, only resuming work there late last month.

Japan’s No.3 automaker is expected to report on Friday a more than doubling in operating profit for the January-March fourth quarter, lagging an earlier recovery from both disasters by rivals Toyota Motor Corp and Nissan Motor Co .

But despite a year that executives characterised as the toughest the 64-year-old company had faced, Honda is likely to have remained in the black thanks to its dominant and profitable motorcycle business and a globally spread-out manufacturing footprint that helped it cope better with the strong yen.

In the business year that ended last month, Honda exported just 253,000 cars from Japan, or less than 30 percent of its domestic output. Toyota shipped 1.67 million vehicles, or 54 percent of the cars it built in Japan and Nissan exported about 741,400, or 62 percent.

Helping its turnaround, Honda is expected to ride faster-than-expected growth in demand in the United States, its biggest and most profitable market, where sales of the remodelled CR-V crossover have jumped by more than a quarter so far this year.

Honda will also make minor changes later this year to the one-year-old Civic after the latest version of the perennially popular model got panned by critics, raising deeper concerns over whether the automaker was slipping in a battlefield made tougher by products from Hyundai Motor Co and resurgent U.S. rivals Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co .

BEIJING, April 24 (Reuters) – Nissan Motor Co is proving that being late to the party in China doesn’t have to be a handicap, and is poised to widen its lead among Japanese automakers in the world’s biggest car market with speedy and aggressive expansion plans.

Despite being among the last global automakers to enter the Chinese market, Nissan outsold Toyota Motor Corp to become the top Japanese light-vehicle brand there last year for the first time, according to research firm LMC Automotive.

Aiding Nissan’s climb have been its cooperative partnership with state-owned Dongfeng Motor Group in the heavily regulated market.

It is also benefitting from an early foray into the booming inland regions and a full product line-up ranging from premium Infiniti-brand cars to light commercial vehicles and compacts such as the popular Tiida model.

After a bumper 2011, Nissan’s local joint venture, Dongfeng Motor Co, was the fastest-growing automaker in China in the first quarter of 2012, growing 16 percent in a market that fell 0.3 percent from the year before.

In another step to accelerate its growth, Nissan this week unveiled at the Beijing auto show the first production model under its joint venture’s own, entry-level Venucia brand, following China’s directive for all foreign car makers to form a separate brand with their local partners to help the country’s fledgling industry gain technological know-how.

“We want to be a global car maker, presenting every single kind of product you can find in the Nissan brand – from the luxury, with Infiniti, and the entry level with affordable cars under Venucia,” Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn told Reuters TV at the show. “We’re going to be everywhere.”

BEIJING, April 23 (Reuters) – Honda Motor Co on Monday unveiled two concept cars developed for China and announced plans to build two new plants there to assemble cars and engines, in an attempt to catch up with its rivals in product offerings in the world’s largest car market.

Honda unveiled the Concept C and Concept S, developed for the Chinese market, that will be the base for two new models to be produced and sold next year with partner Dongfeng Motor Group . The Concept S people mover was developed with China as its main target market, but with a view to selling it globally, Honda said.

“In the past, that kind of thing was always done in Japan,” chief executive Takanobu Ito said on Monday. “This will be a global car, but it starts in China. We need to move further away from a U.S.-centred global growth.”

Honda also said on Monday it would spend 46 billion yen ($560 million) to build a new car and a new engine plant in China, boosting its annual production by around 30 percent.

Guangqi Honda Automobile Co, a Chinese joint venture with Honda, plans to boost annual production to 600,000 vehicles in 2014 from the current 480,000, Honda said.

The boost in production will raise Honda’s total output capacity, including its export-only plant and factories operated with its other partner, Guangzhou Automobile, to 1.01 million a year in 2014 from 770,000 now.

Honda said it plans to start construction of the plants by the end of this year and aims to have them operational in 2014.