Domestic motor vehicle production in August rose 7.1 percent on the year to 695,620 units for the seventh straight month of year-on-year rise, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said Monday.
Domestic production is expected to continue making year-on-year gains on the back of strong exports to North America and Asia, and full-fledged production of new passenger car models, including Toyota Motor Corp.'s mainstay Corolla and Honda Motor Co.'s popular Civic, association officials said.
Combined production of cars, buses and trucks for the first eight months of 2000 came to 6,763,120 units, up 4.5 percent from the same period in 1999.
Output for all of 2000 is likely to top 10 million units, which would be the first time in two years.
In August, automakers turned out 568,328 passenger cars, up 8 percent, marking the 13th consecutive year-on-year rise.
Truck production moved up 2.9 percent to 122,830 units for the first rise in two months, as exports offset slumping domestic sales. Bus production, meanwhile, jumped 15.8 percent to 4,462 units.
All the automakers except Nissan Motor Co. and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. enjoyed year-on-year production gains in August.
Toyota's vehicle production rose 13.6 percent to 231,592 units, while Honda's made an 8.4 percent increase to 91,831 units. Production at Mazda Motor Corp. edged up just 0.5 percent to 53,807 units.
Vehicle output, however, dropped 7.8 percent to 88,523 units for Nissan and 0.2 percent to 64,250 units for MMC.
Nissan suffered from sluggish domestic sales, while MMC's failure to disclose client complaints and recalls of defective vehicles to the government began to have adverse effects, the officials said.