Toyota is forecast to overtake General Motors as the world’s largest manufacturer of motor vehicles, with global sales of around eight million. Accompanied by record profit, the Japanese carmaker appears to be going from strength to strength. But what drives the Toyota engine ?

Research and development is a major aspect of their success. The company invest heavily in development and launch new vehicles when the demand is there. Innovation is a major part of the Toyota operation, as evidenced by hybrid petrol-electric engines and the ongoing development of ethanol-powered cars .

The Toyota Production System is another of the reasons behind their success. Based on strong principles, and the motto: ‘the complete elimination of all waste’, the TPS is in a constant state of improvement. Toyota will now look to apply their TPS values into the retail system, focusing on car finance processes.

David Betteley, the managing director of Toyota Financial Services (UK), said: Moving the good ideas from production to sales and marketing is a challenge, but a challenge we have taken on. Our mission is to attract customers for life. We don’t just want to finance one car, but many cars. Our ambition is to become the most admired sales finance company for all stakeholders. Toyota realises the importance of its financing arm to support dealers, distribution and its retail customers, but we don’t want to grow the finance operations to be more than 10% to 15% of Toyota’s total revenues.