Toyota Pulls Out Scepter to Help Trade Image : Automobiles: The station wagon will be the company’s first totally American-made car for sale in Japan.

Toyota Motor Corp. said it has found a way to allay frictions over Japan’s chronic trade imbalance with the United States--sell American-made station wagons in the Japanese market.

The car maker on Monday introduced the Scepter station wagon, Toyota’s first totally American-made import for sale in Japan. Known as the Camry in the United States, it is built at Toyota Manufacturing USA in Georgetown, Ky.

The wagon has such all-American features as roominess, roof rails and a plain interior, according to Toyota, which has set a sales target of 700 units per month. It is priced at about $24,000.

The Scepter will face stiff competition from domestically produced models. But what Toyota fails to achieve in terms of the bottom line, it appears to be making up by improving its corporate image.

At a reception introducing the Scepter, Toyota made no secret of its hopes to emerge as a champion of American workers. An official read a congratulatory statement from Kentucky Gov. Brereton Jones that hailed Toyota as an “exemplary corporate citizen.”

Toyota President Tatsuro Toyoda said the Scepter should “increase imports from the United States, contribute to local industry there and promote greater partnership, considering the importance of U.S.-Japan relations.”

Importing the Scepter is part of Toyota’s overall “international cooperation program” to ease trade friction. Under that program, Toyota plans to import a total of $1.4 billion in auto parts from the United States and to boost local production to $3.8 billion by 1994.

Toyota follows the example of Honda Motor Co., Japan’s No. 3 auto maker, which now sells about 1,400 American-made Hondas a month in Japan since their April, 1988, debut.

Japan has been under pressure to buy more American cars and auto parts, as automobiles account for about three-quarters of Japan’s $43.4-billion trade surplus with the United States.

Both Toyota and U.S. officials underscored the high quality of the Scepter and other American cars in an effort to reverse the pervasive image of U.S. cars in Japan as overpriced, oversized gas-guzzlers that fall apart easily.

But the officials were less eager to acknowledge the shaky prospects for expanding car sales in Japan, which have been rapidly shrinking because of an economic slowdown. Car sales fell last year for the first time in 10 years by 3.9% to 5.74 million vehicles.

“Perhaps it would have been better to have brought out the car sooner,” said Rick Amano of Toyota’s Americas Project Division, noting that the popularity that big-budget goods enjoyed in the late 1980s has faded.

But Toyota is hoping that the Scepter will be part of the recent boom in recreational vehicles, including jeeps and four-wheel-drive vans.

Since station wagons of Scepter’s size are a relative novelty in Japan, the Scepter is being marketed as a recreational vehicle for the weekend driver who avoids making long commutes on busy roads.