Japan Car Production By Brand : 1970-79

The progress continued. In the 60's Japanese car production increased by 2.5 million and in the 70's 3 million. At this time Japan was making its cars at home and exporting them, especially to the US. Lower production costs in Japan was the reason they didn't want to build plants in the US.

In the 70's doubling production and more was common for most brands. In the ten year period, major winners were Toyota (with local sales up 61%) and Nissan (local +52%), coupled to even better export growth. This led to Toyota production being up 98%, Nissan 93%, Honda 155%, Mazda 188%, Mitsubishi 114%, and Isuzu 360%. Exports were driving the car industry.

Subaru, Daihatsu and Suzuki were the exceptions, all reducing production volumes over the ten years. From 70-79 they all lost home market sales (Daihatsu -30%, Subaru -40% and Suzuki -54%), while exports were insufficient to make up the decline. By 1979 Suzuki exports were less than 10% and Daihatsu about 25% of total production. Subaru had got to nearly half its volume as exports, but the dramatic slump in domestic sales negated that. So losing so much market share at home was their issue, without enough export growth to compensate. Production for Subaru was -3%, Daihatsu -6% and Suzuki -52%.

	Year	Toyota	Nissan	Honda	Mazda	Mitsub
	1970	1,068,321	899,008	276,884	224,520	246,422
	1971	1,400,186	1,101,506	215,256	300,980	260,981
	1972	1,487,661	1,352,251	235,248	379,703	222,890
	1973	1,631,940	1,487,360	256,962	465,734	280,998
	1974	1,484,737	1,255,669	316,012	378,928	233,121
	1975	1,714,836	1,532,731	328,107	387,145	288,846
	1976	1,730,767	1,610,319	473,597	446,618	402,844
	1977	1,884,260	1,615,866	576,631	498,691	486,432
	1978	2,039,115	1,733,132	652,920	493,111	628,886
	1979	2,111,302	1,738,946	706,375	647,001	528,555

	Year	Subaru	Daihatsu	Isuzu	Suzuki	Total
	1970	158,259	141,636	18,815	144,843	3,180,678
	1971	115,466	157,751	14,769	150,963	3,719,829
	1972	130,339	110,430	13,274	90,493	4,024,261
	1973	130,730	113,764	14,734	88,328	4,472,523
	1974	102,209	77,749	28,140	55,277	3,933,816
	1975	108,663	92,123	64,735	50,668	4,569,829
	1976	158,179	70,964	91,157	43,347	5,029,768
	1977	155,705	82,601	74,971	55,888	5,433,022
	1978	140,229	123,233	102,883	62,459	5,977,946
	1979	153,841	133,556	86,397	69,798	6,177,750

Data source: JAMA.

Overall though, a very successful decade...again. Exports had gone from a quarter of production in 1970 to just over half by 1979. This can be seen with Japanese brands increasing domestic sales in this period by 26%, while total production went up 94%. This was the decade that exports took off.

However, political pressure was building and Japanese firms.  Starting in the 1980's voluntary limits on car exports to the US meant that building cars there was the only way to continue a sales expansion in that crucial market. Things had to change, and they did.