If misery loves company, Detroit's Big Three can welcome Toyota to the club.

The Japanese carmaker said yesterday that it would report an operating loss for the first time in 70 years, underscoring the breadth of the auto industry's woes amid the global economic downturn.

"It speaks volumes about the severity of the recession," said George Magliano, an industry analyst with IHS Global Insight. "Nobody's immune, and everybody's taking a hit right now."

Tight credit markets and slumping economies are keeping consumers out of showrooms and making it tough to find financing for those who do want to buy. Sales of cars, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles plummeted almost 37 percent in the U.S. last month compared with November 2007 — the worst monthly drop since January 1982.

Toyota's sales in the U.S. — the carmaker's largest single market — fell 34 percent last month and are down more than 13 percent this year.

"The change that has hit the world economy is of a critical scale that comes once in a hundred years," Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe said in Japan. The drop in vehicle sales over the past month was "far faster, wider and deeper than expected."

The Japanese automaker said it would post an operating loss of $1.66 billion for the fiscal year ending in March. Just last month, Toyota had been forecasting an operating profit of $6.65 billion.

FIRST LOSS IN DECADES

Operating profit reflects the financial performance of a company's core business, before taking into account costs such as income taxes and interest payments. Toyota said it hadn't recorded an operating loss since it started reporting such results officially in 1941. But based on internal company calculations, the automaker recorded an operating loss in 1938, the year after it was founded.

In addition to slumping consumer demand, Toyota and fellow Japanese automakers Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. have been battered by a soaring yen, which has risen 24 percent against the dollar this year and is trading at less than 90 cents to the greenback.

That raises the cost of importing vehicles into the United States, although the higher prices aren't necessarily passed on to buyers, further hurting the automakers' profits. It also decreases the value of profits the automakers earn in the U.S. when dollars are converted into yen.

But Toyota, whose management techniques, inventory systems and technological advances have been the envy of the industry for years, also has made some miscalculations.

Last summer, for instance, a shortage of batteries crimped supplies of its Prius hybrid just when gas prices and demand for the fuel-efficient hatchbacks were peaking. The shortfall enabled dealers to sell Priuses at fat markups, but those extra profits went to the dealers, not Toyota.

Toyota also launched its redesigned Tundra pickup truck in early 2007, just as the U.S. housing market — a key driver of pickup sales — was topping out. Although sales of big pickups are down across the board, the Tundra, despite heavy promotion, has fared worse than its competition from Detroit recently.

Toyota spokesman Sam Butto noted that products such as the Tundra are planned years in advance. "Sometimes the timing is right and sometimes it's not," he said. "Like everyone else, we've got to ride out this current climate."

AHEAD OF COMPETITION

Despite Toyota's struggles, it is still in far better shape than its competitors in the U.S. and elsewhere. GM, Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. have been forced to idle or shut dozens of assembly plants, and GM and Chrysler have turned to the federal government for financial help. Yesterday, Korean automakers Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. cut their joint 2008 sales forecast by 12 percent and said they would freeze pay for executives.

Toyota President Watanabe also reduced the forecast for the number of vehicles Toyota expects to sell globally this year to just below 9 million, down 4 percent from a year ago. And in a departure from previous years, he gave no goal for vehicle sales for fiscal 2009.

Toyota still expects to record a net profit of $555 million for the current fiscal year. That's less than the previous forecast and just a fraction of last year's profit of about $16 billion, but still better than the billions in losses racked up by U.S. car companies.