Domestic sales of new autos excluding minivehicles rose 3.7 percent in January from a year earlier to 241,629 units, the first gain in two months, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said Friday.
Cars accounted for 213,857 units, up 6.4 percent, trucks for 26,602 units, down 14.5 percent, and buses for 1,170 units, up 16.1 percent, the association said.
Not counting minivehicles, Toyota Motor Corp. sold 105,746 automobiles through its Toyota-brand dealership network, down 3.6 percent, and 2,999 upscale cars via separate Lexus showrooms, down 27.3 percent.
Nissan Motor Co. sold 44,666 units, up 10.4 percent, while Honda Motor Co.'s sales rose 40.6 percent to 31,861 units.
Sales of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. jumped 36.4 percent to 6,478 units, while those of Mazda Motor Corp. were up 0.4 percent to 16,344 units.
"The carmakers are enjoying a boost from the new models," said Hiroyoshi Nakagawa, a fund manager at Societe Generale Asset Management Co. in Tokyo.
Honda's three-month-old redesigned Fit has displaced Toyota's Corolla as the country's most popular model, and Nissan's revamped Serena minivan has overtaken Toyota's Estima.
"Still, unless wages improve, the rebound will be short-lived," Nakagawa said.
Wages in Japan fell 1.9 percent, the fastest pace in more than three years, in December from a year earlier. Vehicle sales in the world's third-largest automobile market fell to their lowest in 35 years in 2007, as crude-oil prices rose to as much as $100 a barrel.
"At first glance, the numbers look positive, but sales in January last year were particularly weak, so I wouldn't say we're out of the woods," said Akihiko Imagawa, an analyst in Tokyo at auto-consultancy CSM Worldwide.