Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. The company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937. Toyota is the largest automobile manufacturer in the world, producing approximately 10 million vehicles annually.
The company was originally founded as a spin-off of Toyota Industries, an engineering company founded by Sakichi Toyoda, Kiichi's father. Both companies are now part of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world. Still a division of Toyota Industries, the company developed its first product, the Type A engine, in 1934 and its first passenger car, the Toyota AA, in 1936.

Toyota is headquartered in Toyota, Japan, and is the tenth largest listed company in the world according to the Forbes Global 2000 list (as of 2022). The Toyota Group with its 522 subsidiaries has a total of 372,817 employees (as of 2022) and produces at 51 locations in 26 countries in addition to its 12 Japanese plants.

The history of Toyota begins with the inventor Toyoda Sakichi, who invented the “automatic loom” (Toyoda Automatic Loom) in 1924 and founded Toyota Industries Corporation. When Sakichi Toyoda realized that automobiles were becoming increasingly important, he sent his son Kiichirō Toyoda to the United Kingdom in 1929 to sell the patent rights to his automated loom to the British company Platt Brothers and use the proceeds to set up automobile production.

The first machine was produced in 1934, which was used to produce the first Toyota A1 car model and the GG Truck from 1935. On August 28, 1937, Kiichirō Toyoda founded the Toyota Motor Corporation together with his cousin Toyoda Eiji. As toyoda literally means “fertile rice fields”, the d was replaced with a t for the brand name.

After the Second World War, Toyota benefited from Japan's alliance with the United States. The US automotive industry underestimated the Asian competition until the 1960s. But as early as 1972, Toyota replaced Volkswagen as the leading US import brand with more than 1.5 million vehicles sold and a market share of 14 percent.

Toyota's success in the car market is attributed to several principles, above all the continuous improvement (kai-zen) of organizational processes with the participation of the workforce since the late 1950s, collectively known as the Toyota Production System. From 1967 to 1982, Eiji Toyoda was President of the Group, whose numerous innovations are considered key to Toyota's international success.

In 2008, Toyota became the world's largest car manufacturer, ahead of General Motors (GM), with sales of 8.972 million vehicles. (Source: Wikipedia)