TOKYO – Japan’s domestic sales of new cars, trucks and buses, last month, dropped 37 percent from a year earlier, as the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit production and supplies to auto dealers.Auto sales aggregated 279,389 in March, the seventh-straight monthly decline, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said on Friday.
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake, Japan’s biggest ever recorded, three weeks ago unleashed a tsunami that devastated swathes of the northeast coastline and hit production of all of Japan’s automakers. The latest data are one of the first indications of how severely the disasters have impacted Japan’s economy.
Auto assembly and part manufacturing plants have been shuttered amid power shortages and a lack of components for both domestic and overseas car makers. Toyota led the falls, with its sales down 46 percent, while Nissan’s sales slumped 38 percent and Honda’s fell 28 percent.
