In 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it created its first product Type A engine and in 1936 its first passenger car the Toyota AA. The company was eventually founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries to create automobiles. Toyota also owns and operates Lexus and Scion brands and has a majority shareholding stake in Daihatsu and HINO Trucks and minority shareholdings in Fuji Heavy Industries, Isuzu Motors, and Yamaha Motors. The company includes 522 subsidiaries.

Toyota is headquartered in Toyota City and Nagoya (both in Aichi), and in Tokyo. In addition to manufacturing automobiles, Toyota provides financial services through its division Toyota Financial Services and also creates robots. Toyota Industries and Finance divisions form the bulk of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world.

On May 8th, 2009, Toyota reported a record annual net loss of $4.4 billion, making it the latest automobile maker to be battered by the credit crisis.

Name

In predominantly Chinese speaking countries using traditional Chinese characters (eg Hong Kong, Taiwan), Toyota is known as '豊田'Crown motors HK. In predominantly Chinese speaking countries using simplified Chinese characters (eg China), Toyota is known as '丰田'Toyota China (pronounced as 'Fēngtián' in the Mandarin Chinese dialect). These are the same characters as the founding family's name "Toyoda" in Japanese, which translate to "fertile rice paddies" in the Chinese language as well.

From September 1947, Toyota's small-sized vehicles were sold under the name "Toyopet" (トヨペット).Toyota archives (English)(Japanese) The first vehicle sold under this name was the Toyopet SA"Toyota: A history of the First 50 Years", Toyota Motor Corporation, 1988, ISBN 0-517-61777-3, p102. but it also included vehicles such as the Toyopet SB light truck, Toyopet Stout light truck,"Toyota Truck 48HP", Toyota brochure No. 228, Japan Toyopet Crown and the Toyopet Corona. However, when Toyota eventually entered the American market in 1957 with the Crown, the name was not well received due to connotations of Toys and pets.Toyota's 50th Anniversary in America — Toyopet, retrieved on 4 August 2008 The name was soon dropped for the American market but continued in other markets until the mid 1960's.