YOKOHAMA, JAPAN — Shiny Toyotas are lined up outside the gleaming stores and restaurants at a new Japanese shopping mall. The automaker is trying to cope with a serious problem: Young people in Japan are rapidly losing interest in cars, sending auto sales to 27-year lows.
"We have to go where people congregate," said Yoichiro Ichimaru, a Toyota Motor Corp. senior managing director who oversees Japan sales. "We need to provide opportunities for people to come in contact with cars."
The sprawling indoor mall has shopping carts that look like cars, a Toyota robot that plays trumpet and lots of space devoted to Toyota dealerships amid 220 stores and restaurants.
The Tressa mall, inspired by the French word for braiding, tressage, and located southwest of Tokyo in Yokohama, was developed, built and is being run by Toyota.
It was partly opened in December. Reporters got a preview Tuesday, ahead of its formal opening Thursday.
The mall's main mission is to woo younger Japanese, who Ichimaru said prefer to spend their money on paying their mobile phone bills and on other gadgets.
Sales of new autos in Japan are expected to drop to a 27-year low of 5.3 million vehicles for the fiscal year starting next month, down 0.6%, as demand gets battered by soaring gasoline prices and sluggish wage growth, according to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Assn.
Although Toyota is seeing overseas sales surge -- a growth so rapid that the company could overtake General Motors Corp. as the world's No. 1 automaker in global vehicle sales -- its sales in Japan are faltering.
Toyota, which still controls nearly half the Japanese market, sold 2.26 million vehicles in Japan last year, down 4% from the previous year. Toyota's overseas sales jumped 10% to 7.1 million vehicles.
In Japan, the usual old ways of selling cars, such as using showrooms and TV ads, are no longer working, Toyota officials say.
A study last year by the Nikkei Business Daily found that some people in their 20s said they didn't want a car, even if they were to receive it for free. Others said they didn't find the idea of going for a drive with a date or zipping around in a sports car particularly appealing.
Atsushi Kawai, auto analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities Co., believes that manufacturers haven't done enough to develop cars for the Japanese market, focusing instead on cost cuts and overseas models that sell in numbers.
