Toyota Motor Corp. topped other domestic car makers in April with seven of its products on the list of 10 best sellers in the month, according to a report of Japan Automobile Dealers Association on Tuesday.

The No. 1 Japanese auto maker saw its Vitz compact car remaining on the top position for three months in a row with 13, 344 units sold.

Its popular Corolla car sold 11,187 units, coming to the second.

Honda Motor Co. grabbed the third slot with its Fit small car.

Nissan Motor Co. had two of the top 10 slots, with the Note ranking fifth and the Tiida seventh.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp., still reeling from vehicle defect cover-up scandals, failed to have any model in the top 30.

On sales of imported cars in the same month, Mercedes-Benz beat Volkswagen to become the top-selling brand for the first time in nine months, the Japan Automobile Importers Association said in a separate report. It accounted for 17.85 percent of the Japanese import car market, selling 3,046 units, up 5.5 percent.

BMW came in third with a 30.3 percent rise in sales to 2,509 units, occupying a 14.70 percent share.

Sales of imported cars, including those made abroad by Japanese makers, fell 3.7 percent in April from a year earlier to 17,068 units for the fifth consecutive monthly decline.

Toyota posts record profit in FY 2004

Toyota Motor Corp. on Tuesday reported record group net profit in fiscal 2004 which ended on March 31 amid all-time high sales of vehicles.

Its group net profit in the past fiscal year rose 0.8 percent to a record 1.17 trillion yen (11.1 billion US dollars) on sales of 18.55 trillion yen (176.7 billion dollars), up 7.3 percent. Meanwhile, its global sales hit 7,408,000 vehicles.

Consolidated operating profit also increased 0.3 percent to an all-time high of 1.67 trillion yen (15.9 billion dollars), although group pretax profit fell 0.6 percent to 1.75 trillion yen (16.7 billion dollars).

Toyota's group net profit hit an all-time high for the third consecutive year and topped 1 trillion yen (9.5 billion dollars) for the second successive year. In fiscal 2003, Toyota became the first Japanese company to achieve a net profit exceeding 1 trillion yen.

In Japan, where the overall vehicle market shrank slightly in fiscal 2004, Toyota expanded sales by 3.4 percent to 2,381,000 units, capturing 44.5 percent of the market, excluding minivehicles.

Its overseas vehicle sales increased 13.8 percent to 5,027,000 units.