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Toyota Prius Dominates Japan With 225,066 Sales in 2016

The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association Federation today released sales data for 2016, which because of the weird fiscal year system they use runs between the 1st of April 2016 and the 31st of March 2017. Their results show that Toyota dominated the market even more than usual.
Toyota Prius Dominates Japan With 225,066 Sales in 2016 6 photos
Photo: Toyota
Toyota Prius Dominates Japan With 225,066 Sales in 2016Toyota Prius Dominates Japan With 225,066 Sales in 2016Toyota Prius Dominates Japan With 225,066 Sales in 2016Toyota Prius Dominates Japan With 225,066 Sales in 2016Toyota Prius Dominates Japan With 225,066 Sales in 2016
The best-selling nameplate was, of course, the Prius with 225,066 units. Most of that is down to the regular Prius model, though the PHV plug-in also performed well since its launch earlier in 2017.

The car synonymous with hybrids achieved 144.3% growth last year in the market where it was first introduced way back in December 1997. It looks like somebody's birthday is coming up!

Just to give you an idea of how popular Toyota's hybrid is, the Note which was Nissan's best seller and Honda's equally popular Fit would only challenge the Prius if their numbers were combined.

Toyota also locked out the podium as the Aqua came in second place with 155,566 sales (+80.9%) and the Sienta MPV third at 127,392 (+140.8% compared to the 2015 fiscal year). Of the top 10 models, six of them were Toyotas, including the Voxy (a minivan), Corolla and Vitz (Yaris).

But because of the launch of the Note e-Power range-extended EV, Nissan had the best-selling car in March 2017 with 24,883 units (+178.2%). It was closely followed by the Prius with 22,447 units. The newly launched Toyota C-HR crossover came in fourth with 16,816 sales, suggesting it might enter the top 10 for 2017.

Kei cars continue to be very popular in Japan, with the no.1 spot being taken by the Honda N-Box with 192,369 sales, a year-on-year increase of 111.4%. The Daihatsu Tant and Move came second and third, followed by various rivals from Nissan or Suzuki.

The overall market is about 5 million annual sales including kei cars, about 1.5 million of which are Toyotas not including the Daihatsu brand. Honda and Suzuki get about half as many customers at roughly 700,000 sales a pop.
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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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