A U T O     B U Z Z

Toyota Motor's Thai unit, which compiles statistics for the whole industry, said car sales totaled 24,727 units last month, up from 17,031 a year earlier.

The better-than-expected January performance came after total local Thai vehicle sales rose 13.3 percent in 2001 to 297,052 units.

"This is the best new year start for the industry in five years, certainly since the economic crisis that began in July 1997," Mingkwan Saengsuwan, Vice President of Toyota Thailand, said in a statement.

Mingkwan said the robust January performance was even more impressive considering the first quarter was traditionally a slow season for the Thai car industry.

The Toyota executive said the January sales surge reflected improving consumer confidence helped by more upbeat Thai economic growth forecasts for the year, recent interest rate cuts, and sharp rallies in the local stock market.

New Models Launched

He said with most car makers planning to launch new models in the Thai market this year, the industry's 2002 domestic sales target of 320,000 units appeared conservative.

Industry sources said recovering local sales came on top of a brighter export outlook for 2002. The Federation of Thai Industries has projected exports of cars and trucks to rise to 230,000 units in 2002 from 175,299 in 2001.

Mitsubishi Motors, Ford Motor, Mazda Motor, General Motors, Honda Motor, and Toyota have made Thailand their regional export base for South East Asia and Australia. Most of their exports are one-tonne light pickup trucks.

German luxury car maker BMW AG operating its wholly owned assembly plant east of Bangkok, has said it plans to start exporting sedans from Thailand to regional countries from 2003. BMW sold 3,225 cars in Thailand in 2001 and another 312 vehicles in January.

Industry sources expected Toyota to announce soon a major export-oriented expansion of its Thai output that will allow it to make greater use of its large surplus assembly capacity in Thailand.

Toyota exported about 12,000 cars and trucks from Thailand in 2001. Its domestic sales of 83,514 units last year are expected to rise to 95,000 this year.

But despite its recent business growth, Toyota utilized only about 40 percent of its annual 240,000-unit production capacity installed at its two Thai assembly complexes.

Most of Thailand's total 1.07 million unit annual capacity was invested prior to the Thai economic crash in 1997, and car companies used only 43 percent of it in 2001.

Total domestic Thai car sales in 2001 accounted for about half of the industry's pre-crash peak of 589,126 units in 1996.

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