NAGOYA (Kyodo) Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of Toyota Motor Corp., declared at a meeting held Nov. 1 to announce the company's consolidated performance in the first-half of the current business year that his aim is to turn the company into the world's largest.

"Global sales in 2006 will be on the 8.5 million-vehicle level," he said after announcing Toyota's midterm net profit was a whopping 584 billion yen.

Toyota President Fujio Cho, who was with Okuda at the meeting, said the speed and scale of the company's production overseas are in "a territory we have never experienced."