Toyota China sales remain sluggish under lingering impact of territorial row

Toyota Motor Corp's sales in China fell 22.1 percent in November, highlighting the lingering impact of a territorial row between the two countries, which triggered a slump in Japanese-brand car sales.

Toyota said on Monday that it and its Chinese partners sold a total of about 63,800 vehicles last month, compared to 81,800 vehicles the company sold in November last year.

For the first 11 months of this year, Toyota said it sold a total of about 749,600 vehicles, down 3.3 percent from the year-ago period.

The pace of the Japanese auto maker's sales decline in November eased from the previous two months, but the sales rate was still "far off from our more normalised and targeted sales pace," a senior company executive had said over the weekend.

Toyota's China sales fell nearly 50 percent in September and 44 percent in October. Toyota had set out the year with an aim to sell one million vehicles this year, and that meant it needed to sell more than slightly more than 83,000 cars a month on average to achieve that goal.

Violent protests and calls for boycotts of Japanese products broke out across China in mid-September after Japan nationalised two East China Sea islands, known as the Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese, by buying them from their private owners.

ALSO READ

Part rock concert, part investment workshop: Warren Buffett leads annual meeting like no other

Carmakers' rumbles against quadricycle grow louder

Mukesh Ambani in race to buy IMG Worldwide

Enter the compact luxury