Coming in at 20th is Daihatsu, part of the Toyota Group. It was a world player years ago but has steadily been pulled back to the point it is now only sold in Asia. I guess that it overlaps with Toyota cars anyway to a large degree and marketing small vehicles profitably is a challenge.
Daihatsu cars are also made by a Malaysian firm Perodua and are very popular in that nation. Just under 200,000 of them rolled off the production line in 2014. I don't add them to the Daihatsu figure as Daihatsu are a minority shareholder, so they are made under licence by Perodua. The combined the total would pass Mitsubishi's worldwide total, which shows how popular the big D is in Asia. It doesn't even rely on China to help its production numbers.
Daihatsu is a very reliable car make too, so a shame they have pulled out of so many markets. I bought a new one ten years ago and the salesman said it would only need routine servicing, they don't break down. I thought he exaggerated, but it hasn't had one problem in that decade. Mechanical simplicity is part of the reason.
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | Nation | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | % |
1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Japan | 609,657 | 774,406 | 774,949 | 782,195 | 71.2 |
2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Indonesia | 191,043 | 222,179 | 270,650 | 316,016 | 28.8 |
3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | Venezuela | 978 | 870 | 410 | 60 | 0.0 |
Total | 801,678 | 997,455 | 1,046,009 | 1,098,271 | 1.31 |
Data source: OICA.
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