Toyota with an estimated brand value of $33.427 billion is the 10th most powerful brand in the world.

Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation and the world's largest auto company that manufactures automobiles, trucks, buses, and robots. The headquarters of Toyota are located in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. It is the world's eighth largest company by revenue of $179 billion as of 2006.

The company was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries to create automobiles. It created, first as a department of Toyota Industries, its first product Type A engine in 1934 and its first passenger car in 1936.

Toyota Motor Co. was established as an independent company in 1937. Although the founding family name is Toyoda, the company name was changed in order to signify the separation of the founders' work life from home life, to simplify the pronunciation, and to give the company a happy beginning. Toyota is considered luckier than Toyoda in Japan.

Katsuaki Watanabe is Toyota's president and CEO, while Fujio Cho is chairman. Shoichiro Toyoda is the company's honorary chairman; Hiroshi Okuda is senior advisor; and Katsuhiro Nakagawa is vice chairman.

The corporate logo of the Toyota car company at the annual motor show in Paris. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

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