NAGOYA (Kyodo) Toyota Motor Corp. is thinking of building a factory in Tianjin, China, to produce small cars beginning in 2007, company officials said Friday.

If built, the new factory would be Toyota's sixth in China and could make such models as the Corolla at an annual rate of about 200,000 units, they said.

Japan's largest automaker has two factories in Tianjin, about 130 km southeast of Beijing, as well as one each in the city of Changchun and Sichuan Province. It will open a plant in Guangzhou in 2006.

As with the two existing factories in Tianjin, the new one would be built and run jointly with China FAW Group Corp., China's largest automaker.

"There is no doubt that the (Chinese auto) market will keep growing," Toyota President Fujio Cho said recently, despite signs it is starting to slow down.

Toyota hopes to capture 10 percent of the Chinese auto market by 2010, up from around 2 percent now.

Vehicle output up 3%

Kyodo News Production of cars, trucks and buses in Japan rose 2.8 percent in April from a year before to 870,967 units for the fourth consecutive monthly rise, due to brisk demand at home and overseas, an industry body said Friday.

The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said domestic vehicle demand grew 7.4 percent in the reporting month to 405,036 units and exports rose 6.7 percent to 428,373 units for the third straight monthly gain.

Car output climbed 3.3 percent to 723,910 vehicles, while buses soared 31.8 percent to 6,258 units. Truck production fell 0.5 percent to 140,799 units for the first decline in three months.

Exports of cars rose 6.6 percent to 363,231 units, overseas shipments of trucks gained 4.1 percent to 58,274 units, and bus exports surged 48.6 percent to 6,868 units.