NAGOYA —

Toyota Motor Corp plans to close some 300 dealer outlets across Japan over around the next three years amid a shrinking domestic market, sources familiar with the matter said Tuesday. Toyota plans to support voluntary efforts of about 290 sales companies to consolidate or close their outlets, which currently total about 4,900 nationwide, the sources said.
   
The sales companies will choose which outlets to consolidate or close by judging from sales and demand situations in areas where they operate, they said. Toyota, however, does not plan to automatically close outlets in sparsely populated areas where demand is weak in view of dealer outlets’ social functions to provide vehicle repairs and maintenance, they said.
 
Toyota currently has four dealer channels, including Netz and Toyopet. In 2008, vehicle sales in Japan totaled about 3.21 million units, down from about 6 million in 1990, as sales slumped partly due to a declining population and dwindling interest in cars among the young generation.

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5 Comments

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  Tahoochi at 09:35 AM JST - 11th November

  And the cycle continues. After a decade or so, Japan will become bubbly again with lots of unneeded jobs and businesses, over-priced everything, and the bubble will burst, and they'll have to shut everything down again.

  Toyota is smart though, because they have so many smaller "companies" (they're all Toyota owned) supplying the main company, so they can contain financial losses (to an extent) within these separate companies.

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  neganip at 11:33 AM JST - 11th November

  If this is a sign of things to come I dont expect that the real estate market or the employment market is going to hold up.

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  kaminarikeizai at 01:57 PM JST - 11th November

  “Use and Throw” business practice is bad for Japan. It seems that Japan is entering into the real recession (below bottom line) and impossible to come back from there. We can find many white color signboards or banners in all Japan.

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  thomyorke at 04:24 PM JST - 11th November

  Thats a LOT of jobs that are going to be lost over this..

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  taisho999 at 07:44 PM JST - 12th November

  Not to mention that Toyota has lost its crown as the automaker that sold the most cars this year. Volkswagen has taken Toyota's spot.

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