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Viknesh Vijayenthiran

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Toyota's new minicar due in two years

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Toyota’s boss has revealed his desire to launch a new minicar within the next two years with the likely production site for the ultra-cheap model to be in India. Speaking at a recent conference, Fujio Cho explained that there are several countries under consideration for construction of the new car and India is likely to be the first.

Brazil is also a likely target but for now attention is on India. Toyota is reportedly planning to build a new plant with capacity of 100,000 cars on a plot of land it owns in Bangalore, according to Reuters. Toyota only sold 48,000 vehicles in India last year, lagging behind several other carmakers such as Suzuki, Tata and Hyundai.

The plan is to launch a new minicar priced below $5,000. Toyota is also rumored to unveiling another small hatch at next month's Frankfurt Show that's aimed at European markets to rival car’s like the Mercedes Smart car and similar models expected from VW and BMW.

The introduction of such cars will see Toyota annual sales tally surpass ten million units by the end of the decade. Earlier this month, Japan’s Nikkei reported that Toyota sales will reach 10.4 million by 2009 (up from 8.8 million last year) no doubt on the back of sales of these new minicars.