Toyota Motor Corp. resumed full production at all North American plants this week and said it will expand U.S. output of small engines as Japan’s largest automaker works to boost sales slowed by a March earthquake, according to Bloomberg.

As of this week, “all plants and suppliers in North America are at full speed, and most are working overtime,” Steve St. Angelo, executive vice president for North American engineering and manufacturing, told reporters yesterday in Torrance, California. “Our parts problems are now behind us.”

Toyota will also add production of four-cylinder engines at its plant in Huntsville, Alabama, St. Angelo said. The company will hire 240 more workers at the factory, which already makes six- and eight-cylinder engines for Toyota models built in the region, he said. Four-cylinder output will start late this month, said Mike Goss, a Toyota spokesman.

The company briefly halted production after Japan’s record earthquake and tsunami in March and lost sales in markets including the U.S. as reduced supplies of parts and power in Japan led to vehicle shortages. Through August, the Toyota City, Japan-based automaker’s U.S. sales fell 7.8 percent as the industrywide total rose 10.5 percent.

Toyota already makes four-cylinder engines in Georgetown, Kentucky, and Buffalo, West Virginia. The added production will be for Corollas to be built at the company’s Blue Springs, Mississippi, plant, which opens in November, St. Angelo said in an interview yesterday at the company’s U.S. museum in Torrance.

Production of the 2012 Camry that goes on sale this week is accelerating at the Georgetown plant, the company’s largest in North America, said St. Angelo, who joined Toyota in 2005 after working for the former General Motors Corp. for 30 years.

Toyota’s U.S. sales unit is also based in Torrance. The company’s American depositary receipts, each representing two ordinary shares, rose 88 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $69.05 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

TOKYO — Most Japanese automakers reported lackluster vehicle production and sales for July, underscoring ongoing malaise in the industry as it grapples with a strong yen, precarious global economy and recovery from the March 11 tsunami.

Worldwide production at Toyota Motor Corp. fell 6.1 percent from a year earlier to 594,614 vehicles, the company said Tuesday. Its domestic sales of passenger cars, trucks and buses tumbled more than 35 percent, and exports fell 5 percent due to weaker shipments to North America, according to The Detroit News.

Toyota, however, said its production returned to levels that were near to what it had planned before the March earthquake and tsunami struck Japan’s northeastern coast, wiping out auto parts suppliers.

The automaker is preparing to ramp up production in the coming months to make up for the capacity lost to the disaster. Between October and March 2012, the automaker plans to build an extra 350,000 vehicles.

The numbers were worse at Honda Motor Co., where global production tumbled more than 34 percent to 206,727 vehicles in July. It was the sixth straight month of decline.

Honda’s domestic sales of vehicles fell 31.5 percent and exports retreated more than 19 percent.

Standing above the crowd was Nissan Motor Co., which continued to gain momentum and set company records in July.

The Yokohama-based automaker recorded an almost 18 percent jump in worldwide output to 388,680 vehicles — its best-ever July performance. Production in the U.S. benefited from stronger demand for the Altima sedan, Nissan said.

Although Nissan’s Japan sales fell 17 percent in volume terms, global sales overall rose 8 percent. Exports surged more than 23 percent.

Among Japan’s other car makers, Suzuki Motor Corp. posted a 3.6 percent decline in global production to 228,147 vehicles.

Worldwide output at Mazda Motor Corp. fell almost 13 percent to 103,384 vehicles. At Mitsubishi Motors Corp., it declined about 5 percent to 97,862 vehicles.

General Motors Co. outsold Toyota Motor Corp. globally in the first six months to become the world’s largest automaker after the record March earthquake disrupted production in Japan.

GM sales rose 8.9 percent to 4.536 million units in the half-year ended June 30, the Detroit-based automaker said in a statement yesterday. That compares with 4.13 million units at second-ranked Volkswagen AG and 3.71 million units for Toyota, including its luxury Lexus marque and affiliates Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors Ltd., according to statements by the companies.

Output at the Toyota City, Japan-based automaker slumped 23 percent to 3.37 million units in the half-year after the company halted production following the magnitude-9 temblor and tsunami in March, reported Bloomberg. Toyota expects to enter a production recovery phase in September, one month earlier than previously announced, it said Aug. 2.

“Even if Toyota recovers production, it will take another few more months for sales to actually recover” as it takes time to deliver vehicles to dealers, said Takeshi Miyao, an analyst at consulting company Carnorama in Tokyo. “Toyota’s sales may trail behind Volkswagen in the full-year as well.”

GM’s U.S. sales climbed to 669,065 vehicles in the second quarter, according to industry researcher Autodata Corp. The Chevrolet Cruze was the top-selling car in the market in June and the Chevy Silverado full-size pickup remained the second- most popular vehicle, behind only Ford Motor Co.’s F-Series line.

Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea’s largest automaker, had a 11 percent jump in first-half deliveries of 1.96 million units.

Toyota shares fell 3.8 percent to 3,020 yen as of the 11:30 a.m. trading break in Tokyo. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average declined 3.4 percent.

Toyota Motor Corp., replenishing auto inventory thinned by Japan’s earthquake in March, said it’s not likely to begin posting U.S. sales gains again for at least two more months.

Sales for Toyota, Asia’s largest automaker, will fall again in July after dropping 33 percent in May and 21 percent in June, Bob Carter, Toyota’s group vice president for U.S. sales, said yesterday. Supplies of cars and light trucks are still below average, and it will be weeks before dealers are fully restocked, he said.

“Our market share will begin recovering this month, but it will be September or maybe October before we’re really growing again,” Carter said in an interview in Cle Elum, Washington. “We were in too deep a hole, and we’re still digging out.”

Japan’s magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami disrupted assembly operations for Toyota and Honda Motor Co. as a result of shortages of parts and electricity. Toyota’s U.S. sales slid 4 percent in the year’s first half, while the total market gained 13 percent, according to Autodata Corp., a Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey-based research company.

Edmunds.com, an automotive pricing and data company in Santa Monica, California, said today Toyota’s sales will likely fall 21 percent in July from a year ago, while TrueCar.com, also based in Santa Monica, estimated the Toyota City, Japan-based company’s sales will drop 33 percent. Both released their estimates in e-mailed statements.

Automakers are scheduled to report U.S. sales for July on Aug. 2. Toyota has said most of its production in Japan and North America will recover by September, reported Bloomberg.

The company’s first-half market share was 12.8 percent, down from 15.1 percent a earlier, according to Autodata.

“Inventory issues are not seriously holding back Toyota anymore, and a 25 percent month-over-month boost in incentives are helping the company finally pick up the sales momentum that it needed,” Jessica Caldwell, senior analyst at Edmunds.com, said in an e-mailed statement today.

“But with sales expected to be off more than 20 percent compared to July 2010, Toyota still has a long way to go,” she said.

While U.S. auto demand should continue to recover this year, sales aren’t growing as fast as Toyota expected because of weak consumer confidence, Carter said.

“That’s the most important thing for us, and right now the consumer doesn’t seem to be that confident about jobs and the overall economy,” he said.

Toyota’s American depositary receipts, each representing two ordinary shares, fell 74 cents to $81.43 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The company’s U.S. sales unit is based in Torrance, California.

Toyota Motor Corp., to make its earnings target this year, needs the new Camry to wrest back market share from Hyundai Motor Co.’s Sonata sedan.

The Camry, the best-selling car in the U.S., has lost ground to the Sonata, with Seoul-based Hyundai raising its U.S. output and surpassing the Camry in May for the first time.

“Sonata became a very honorable contender in the market,” said Yoshimi Inaba, Toyota’s North American chairman, in a July 12 interview. “We do have good respect for the model, and the sales figures show it’s increasing quite a bit.”

U.S. sales of Camry last year dropped 31 percent to 327,804 compared with deliveries in 2007, Toyota’s best-ever year, while Honda Motor Corp.’s Accord sales also dropped 28 percent to 282,530 in the period, as both models approached the end of their product cycles. Sales of the Sonata, revamped in January 2010, surged 35 percent to 196,623, reported Bloomberg.

The 2011 Sonata’s overall design quality is rated “among the best” by J.D. Power & Associates and earned a “Top Safety Pick” award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Until a few years ago, Toyota’s Camry and Honda’s Accord “defined” the midsize segment in the U.S. for at least a decade, said Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive officer of auto researcher Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, California. “But Hyundai has really stepped up their game, and Toyota’s been paying attention.”

The next version of the Camry will have a more contemporary design and improved performance and handling, President Akio Toyoda told U.S. dealers on June 29 in Las Vegas. The new model will go on sale in the latter part of the year.

Toyota’s current Camry, last refreshed in March 2006, gets up to 32 miles per gallon in highway driving in the U.S., compared with the Sonata’s 35 mpg and Honda’s 34 mpg. With Hyundai’s improvements in design and fuel efficiency, sales of the Sonata have jumped 29 percent to 115,014 units this year through June, while the Camry has dropped 4.4 percent to 147,469 in the U.S. Restricted production after the March 11 earthquake in Japan has also contributed to the decline.

Hyundai didn’t have to slow production after the quake as its Japan-based suppliers’ plants aren’t located in the affected areas, according to the company. As a result, Sonata outsold Camry in May for the first time, according to Edmunds.com.

While both the Sonata and Camry sold in the U.S. are built locally, the weak Korean currency relative to the dollar benefits Hyundai when it repatriates profit. The yen, on the other hand, has hurt Toyota by gaining about 10 percent over the past year. The Japanese currency on July 13 climbed to as high as 78.50 yen per dollar, the strongest since March 17.

The 2011 Camry is currently priced from $20,195, compared with the Sonata’s $19,395 starting price tag.

Camry – which is the Anglicized spelling of “kanmuri,” meaning “crown” in Japanese – accounted for about a fifth of U.S. sales at Toyota last year.

Defending its lead will be more difficult given stiffer competition from Hyundai, Ford Motor Co., and an “ambitious” Volkswagen AG, said Tadashi Usui, an analyst at Moody’s K.K. in Tokyo.

Sales of Ford’s Fusion sedan have jumped 18 percent this year through June, outselling the Accord. Volkswagen, aiming to topple Toyota as the world’s biggest carmaker by 2018, will start selling a Tennessee-built Passat sedan as early as September.

“I’m not necessarily optimistic that the new Camry will help Toyota regain market share,” Usui said.

With a drop in demand for pick-up trucks, Toyota is more dependent now on its best-selling Camry, along with Lexus luxury models to boost earnings, he said.

Moody’s Investors Service lowered its debt rating on Toyota on June 28, taking it below Japan’s sovereign grade for the first time, citing weaker ability to recover previous levels of profitability. Toyota expects to earn 280 billion yen ($3.52 billion) in net income this fiscal year, compared with 1.7 trillion yen in the year ended March 2008.

Helped by the new Camry, Toyota’s market share will rise to 15 percent in the six months ending in December, from 12.8 percent in the first half of the year, according to consulting company IHS Automotive, based in Englewood, Colorado. Still, Toyota’s share will stagnate at that level over the next three years because of strong competition, said IHS analyst Masatoshi Nishimoto in Tokyo.

“Toyota will not recover its 16-17 percent market share from before the financial crisis,” he said.

Honda, which will likely introduce its updated Accord sedan next year, will also remain at about 11 percent market share through 2014, slightly up from 10.6 percent last year, according to IHS. Hyundai, including affiliate Kia Motors Corp., will rise to at least 8.5 percent in the period, from 7.7 percent in 2010.

“We recognize that the Korean models are very competitive because of their good quality and affordable price,” said Keitaro Yamamoto, a spokesman for Honda in Tokyo. “Before, it was Accord versus Camry, but it’s definitely becoming Accord versus Camry versus Sonata.”

While analysts cite Hyundai’s improvements in styling as a factor for its growth, design may not be as important as performance. “People buying a Camry aren’t looking to make a statement,” Anwyl said. “They’re looking for dependability.”

The new Camry is Toyota’s first major full-model change since last year’s recalls of more than 10 million vehicles for flaws linked to unintended acceleration.

Following the recalls, Toyoda formed a global quality committee to tackle defects. In the U.S., the carmaker hired additional engineers at its technical center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as the facility plays a bigger role in developing models for the American market.

“If there are any lingering concerns on Toyota’s vehicle safety, this is a good opportunity to close that chapter,” Anwyl said.

CHICAGO- Toyota Motor Corp’s brand Lexus will end its streak of 11 years as the top luxury brand in the U.S. market due to lost sales in the aftermath of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, said Mark Templin, Lexus Division general manager.

Templin said Lexus U.S. sales will fall about 17 percent to around 190,000 vehicles in 2011, reported Reuters.

The United States is the biggest market for Lexus.

All Lexus models, except the RX 350 crossover sport utility vehicle, are made in Japan.

Templin said the Cambridge, Ontario plant that makes the RX 350 will be back at full capacity in September.

Most Japanese plants assembling Lexus models have already returned to full strength.

However, the RX 450h hybrid SUV will not be at full production until October. The hybrid is typically 15 percent to 20 percent of RX sales in the U.S. market.

Lexus U.S. sales fell 38 percent in June as dealers ran out of key products. At the end of the month, dealers had about half their normal stock.

“June was the bottom of the trough, and we’ve turned the corner. We see the rest of the year being much better for us,” Templin said, speaking to reporters at a Lexus media event in Chicago.

Lexus sales tumbled 18 percent in the first half of 2011 to 88,010, and German rivals BMW and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz sprinted by.

BMW’s sales rose 13 percent to 113,705, and Mercedes-Benz climbed 7 percent to 110,926. If 2011 full year results end as expected, it would be the first time that BMW has outsold Lexus in the U.S. since 1997.

Templin shrugged off the significance of losing the luxury sales crown, and when asked if Lexus could reclaim the top spot in 2012, he said.

“Whether we’re No. 1 or not, I don’t care. We’ve never focused on that. We won’t change our plan midyear because someone else is selling more cars than us.”

Industry analyst Aaron Bragman of IHS Automotive Insight said on Friday the slump at Lexus goes deeper than a shortage of vehicles. He suggested that Lexus could suffer from the same stigma as did General Motors Co’s Buick brand for the past several decades: old people’s car.

Bragman said it would be “quite a challenge” for Lexus to reclaim No. 1 in luxury sales in 2012 even with full production because its lineup is not as alluring as it once was and it relies heavily on two models, the RX 350 and ES 350 sedan, a spinoff of the Toyota Camry.

The RX so far this year accounts for 45 percent of Lexus U.S. sales and the ES sedan 19 percent.

“Like Toyota, they’ve lost their momentum. They have an aging buyer base, and a lot of their dealers are afraid they will become the next Buick. Their new products haven’t resonated with younger buyers.”

The median buyer age for Lexus is in the mid-50s, and Templin said he is comfortable with that because it is a result of high loyalty.

Sportier models such as the IS sedan and CT hybrid sedan are attracting younger owners, said Templin.