Toyota Motor Corp

Earthquakes, floods, a strong Japanese yen — just about everything has conspired to hold Toyota Motor Corp. back. But with the world's No. 3 automaker recovering from the natural disasters and the North American auto market continuing to strengthen, Toyota on Tuesday raised its earnings forecast for its current fiscal year. Toyota manufactures the Camry, the bestselling passenger car in America, as well as the Prius hybrid and other models. It also owns the Lexus brand. The automaker is now forecasting a profit of 200 billion yen ($2.6 billion)

Toyota Motor Corp.'s recovery is proving tougher than anticipated. Already poised to lose its crown as the world's largest carmaker this year, Toyota cut its profit forecast by more than half after Thailand's worst floods in almost 70 years disrupted output of Camry and Prius vehicles. Thailand's floods exacerbated Japan-based Toyota's struggles with the effects of Japan's earthquake and tsunami in March and the surging yen. The reduced forecasts follow Ford Motor Co. on Thursday declaring its first quarterly dividend since 2006 and precede the likely concession of its three-year reign as the world's biggest carmaker to General Motors Co. "It's acts of God after other acts of God," Jody Lurie, an analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia, said Friday.

Toyota Recalling 28,100 Lexus Cars in North America: Toyota Motor Corp. said it is recalling the 1993 and '94 Lexus GS300s to replace suspension parts that could fail and affect steering and handling. John McCandless, a Toyota spokesman in Detroit, said the company had no reports of such failures in North America. The action is part of an overall recall of 612,000 Toyota cars in six models. Most were sold in Japan.

Toyota Plans Joint Venture With IBM, Toshiba: Toyota Motor Corp. is negotiating with International Business Machines Corp. and Toshiba Corp. to establish a company to design automotive computer software, company officials said. The Toyota spokeswoman said an agreement has not yet been reached, but added that an announcement will be made soon. A spokesman for IBM said the jointly held company would design software for the development of new cars.

Toyota Launches Probe of Camry Door Locks: Toyota Motors Sales, a unit of Toyota Motor Corp., said it established a customer assistance program to deal with reports of problems with power door locks on 1987 to 1991 Camry models. The move came amid reports that locks on some Camry models could jam, locking people out of their cars or trapping them inside. Toyota said the door locks are not used on the 1992 model Camry.

Toyota Motor Corp. dominated Consumer Reports' annual survey of automobile reliability, accounting for 15 of 31 vehicles rated "most reliable" by the magazine's readers. A total of 29 of the cars and trucks given a top score were Japanese brands, Consumer Reports said. General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. had one entry each, while DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler had none. No European automakers made the list.

For years General Motors Co. has wanted to be more like Toyota Motor Corp. It wanted to sell more passenger cars like Toyota. It wanted Toyota's reputation for reliability. But in one area, GM is doing everything it can to not be like Toyota. As federal safety officials began investigating the cause of fires that followed test crashes of its Chevrolet Volt electric vehicles, GM shifted into communications overdrive, trotting out senior executives and engineers to talk about the issue and launching a customer-care initiative.

In another corporate sputter for beleaguered Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp., the company said it was recalling more than 420,000 vehicles in the U.S. in connection with potential steering problems. The safety recall to replace the crankshaft pulley on the V-6 engine affects 283,200 Toyota and 137,000 Lexus vehicles in the U.S., the company said. Worldwide it covers 550,000 cars. There have been no reports of accidents or injuries related to the problems, Toyota said in a news release from its American headquarters in Torrance.

Can a revamped Camry help Toyota Motor Corp. get its groove back? After dominating the U.S. sedan market for more than a decade, Toyota's top-selling Camry has been losing ground to resurgent domestic automakers and upstart Korean manufacturers. Now, Toyota is fighting back with a lower-priced and fully redesigned 2012 Camry — unveiled with much fanfare Tuesday at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Toyota said it was dropping the base price of its core LE Camry model by $200 to $22,500.

Toyota Motor Corp slumped to its first quarterly loss in two years after the March 11 disaster virtually halted production, and the Japanese auto giant warned the stronger yen was hobbling it in the battle against South Korean rivals. The loss was smaller than investors feared and the world's largest automaker said supply chains were recovering quickly, enabling it to raise its full-year operating profit forecast by half, to 450 billion yen ($5.9 billion). Analysts expect a stronger showing for the year to March 2012 from Toyota, which is typically conservative in its forecasts, but highlighted the challenges ahead.

Toyota Motor Corp. will recall about 22,000 vehicles because a tire-pressure monitoring system might fail to notify drivers of a flat or deflated tire. The recall affects Toyota Sequoia, FJ Cruiser, Land Cruiser, Tacoma and Tundra vehicles from the 2008 to 2011 model years. Toyota has issued recalls of more than 13 million vehicles since September 2009 in the U.S. alone, including the recall of more than 2 million vehicles to correct problems with floor mats and other issues that could cause unintended acceleration.

Toyota still faces major hurdles in rebuilding its image and market share even though a federal study found no evidence that electronic defects accounted for sudden acceleration in its vehicles. The results of a study conducted by NASA engineers were welcome news for Toyota Motor Corp., but it doesn't change the biggest problem the world's largest automaker faces ? the lack of dynamic products at a time when competitors are coming out with greatly improved cars, analysts say. "Customers are walking away with the perception that even though a Toyota is well built, they don't see it as the next step in design, styling and innovative features," said Alexander Edwards, president of Strategic Vision Inc., an automotive research and marketing consulting firm.

A Texas judge has named a special counsel to investigate whether Toyota Motor Corp. intentionally hid evidence during a 2006 lawsuit involving a woman paralyzed when her Camry rolled over. Johnson County District Court Judge John E. Neill appointed J. Gregory Coontz to the job, giving him power to probe whether Toyota violated a court order in the case, which was settled in 2007 for $1.5 million. The judge took the unusual step after reviewing internal documents provided by a former Toyota lawyer who managed rollover litigation for the company and subsequently claimed that the automaker intentionally held back safety data in lawsuits.