Daihatsu Motor Company

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(TYO: [7262]  ) is a Japanese manufacturer of cars, especially compact/small cars. These cars are also known as kei jidosha in Japan.

Daihatsu researches hybrid vehicles and two stroke diesel engines.

The name "Daihatsu" is a combination of the first kanji (Japanese character) for Osaka (大) and the first of the word "engine manufacture" (発), put together they are pronounced "daihatsu".

Company history

1907 Hatsudoki Seizo Co., Ltd. founded
1951 Company renamed: Daihatsu Motor Co., Ltd.
1967 Starting cooperation with Toyota Motor Corporation
1988 Daihatsu USA launched with the Charade and Rocky
1992 Daihatsu USA closed in February
1999 Becomes subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation

It was reported on 31 March, 2005, that Toyota will pull Daihatsu out of the Australian market, after sales dwindled severely. Sales were down a third so far in 2005, from 816 to just 541 vehicles. This is in spite of the new-car market in Australia growing 7%. Daihatsu will completely wind up sales in March 2006. Daihatsu has been in the Australian market for almost 40 years. The same was thought about Daihatsu´s operations in Chile, where its a well known brand for its `70s models as the Charade or Cuore, after sales of around 10 units in 2004 and 2005 (each year). But Toyota announced it will take the distribution for Daihatsu in Chile, to get back to the glory years of the brand there. There will be many new models as well. Maybe the same can happen in Australia. Daihatsu is quite popular in Venezuela nowadays, with the Terios. Daihatsu has supplied cars under different badges to many different automakers in the past, and also supplies engines and transmissions to Malaysia's #2 carmaker, Perodua, which sells cars in the UK and Malaysia.

Passenger car models

Toy model of Daihatsu Midget

Applause
Atrai
Be-Go came with Toyota Rush
Boon came with Toyota Passo
Coo came with Toyota bB
Ceria built with Mira's chassis
Charade
Charmant
Compagno
Consorte
Copen
Cuore
Domino
Fellow Max
Hijet
Max
Midget
Mira
Move
Rocky
Sirion also sold as the Toyota Duet
Sonica
Taruna built with Terios' chassis
Terios also sold as the Toyota Cami
Valera
Xenia came with Toyota Avanza
YRV

Plants

Ikeda (Osaka prefecture), also headquarters
Ryuo (Shiga prefecture)
Tada (Hyogo prefecture)
Oyamazaki (Kyoto prefecture)
Sunter II (Indonesia) - Astra Daihatsu
Cumana, Estado Sucre (Venezuela) - Terios is the only Daihatsu model that is made there.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

[media]

[Daihatsu] (official site in Japanese)
[Daihatsu] (English site)
[Daihatsu Mods Forum] (for Daihatsu Enthusiasts World Wide)
[Daihatsu Charade GTti] (Personal website containing lots of information on the Daihatsu Charade, specifically the Charade GTti)

[Daihatsu cars news]

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