The Toyota Motor Corporation will build 8.74 million vehicles in 2007 - 270,000 units more than it targeted - owing to brisk overseas sales, the Mid-Japan Economist, a newspaper partly owned by Toyota, has reported.

Excluding subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor Co and Hino Motors Ltd Japan''s top automaker had said in late 2006 that it planned to build 4.27 million cars in Japan and 4.2 million overseas this year.

A revised plan now calls for 4.25 million units at home and 4.49 million units overseas, with higher production in the United States and Asia, the newspaper said on Monday 1 October.

In the first eight months of the year, Toyota built 2.73 million vehicles in Japan and 2.82 million vehicles abroad. If accurate, these figures mark the first year that Toyota will make more cars abroad than in Japan.

Toyota is adding manufacturing capacity overseas, with new factories planned in Russia and Canada, among other countries, over the next few years. Together with subsidiaries Daihatsu and Hino, it will produce more vehicles this year than General Motors.