Toyota Motor Corp.'s vehicle exports to the United States have topped 1 million units for the first time in 20 years.
Exports in the first 10 months of 2006 came to 1,033,545 units, a figure that already surpasses the full-year record of 1,032,642 units set in 1986, according to company figures.
The January-October figure is up 44.1 percent from the same period a year earlier and means that exports from Japan account for about half of Toyota's new-vehicle sales in the world's largest market.
As part of its efforts to prevent a recurrence of the trade friction that dogged the company in the 1980s, Toyota intends to open its eighth assembly plant in North America in 2009, sources said.
The company is in the final stages of picking the construction site, which is expected to be in the Midwestern or the Eastern United States, within 500 kilometers of Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc., a research and development facility in Erlanger, Kentucky.
Toyota's unit sales in the United States increased 12.2 percent year on year in the January-October period.
For the full year through December, the company is on pace to rank third in U.S. sales, surpassing the Chrysler division of DaimlerChrysler AG.
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