Internationally, the world’s largest car manufacturer, Toyota Motor Co. announced today that it would stop all production from all Japanese plants for a total of eleven days during March and February.

This announcement follows the almost unexpected three day halt in January, where Toyota blamed unexpected demand drops and a global financial crisis for the overstock and the need to reduce production temporarily.

A spokesman for Toyota, Hideaki Homma spoke in Tokyo, blaming the production halt on “a slump in global sales,” and adding that “demand in the world auto market is so depressed that every model is falling sharply in sales.”

Toyota formally accepted the possibility for future plant shutdowns, saying that it would be unwise to suggest that demand will recover at a rapid rate and adding that this is just a “coping mechanism,” for the “depression of demand.”

In December, Toyota reported a fall in U.S. demand of 37 per cent, a fall worse than that of the American auto-manufacturers at 32 per cent for Ford, and 31 per cent for General Motors. Analysts expect Ford’s business performance to fall even further in the coming months as government interventionism causes difficulty in competition.

Toyota released a statement yesterday, saying that Japanese demand for Toyota vehicles fell 18 per cent in December, totaling a fall of 7.4 per cent overall for 2008.

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