U.S. Auto Makers Aim to Get on Right Side of Japan : Trade: They announce plans to build more right-side-drive vehicles in an effort to boost sales, deflect criticism.

American auto officials attending a major industry show here Wednesday said they are preparing to sharply boost the production of right-side-drive vehicles in an effort to increase their sales in Japan.

American attempts to sell left-side-drive vehicles here while demanding that Japan ease barriers to U.S. exports has been the source of much derision in Japan.

While left-side-drive cars carry a prestigious “foreign” cachet within a small segment of Japanese auto buyers, many Japanese cite the slowness in developing more right-side-drive vehicles as proof that Americans are not doing enough to make their products attractive to this market.

At the Tokyo Motor Show--a huge, two-week international exhibition focused on new models and cutting-edge technology--American automobile makers said they are responding to the criticism, and that a growing number of right-hand-drive vehicles will be rolling off U.S. assembly lines.

The U.S. efforts to accommodate the Japanese market comes against a background of gradual reductions in Japanese barriers to the import of foreign cars and auto parts, and an expectation that U.S.-Japan trade talks also under way here this week will lead to increased openness in the Japanese market.

In these trade “framework” negotiations, launched as a result of President Clinton’s July visit to Tokyo, Washington is pressing for major steps to increase access to the Japanese market for foreign manufacturers.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition that he not be identified, predicted that the two sides will succeed in reaching an agreement by early next year that will achieve many of the goals in automobile trade sought by Washington in talks with Japan over the past six or seven years.

Settling the auto trade dispute is taking priority in the talks because roughly two-thirds of the United States’ trade imbalance with Japan is related to automotive sales.

Whether Japan maintains a closed market, or whether U.S. industry is not doing enough to adapt to the market has been hotly debated in the often-acrimonious discussions on auto trade.

U.S. industry officials acknowledged Wednesday that it will still take years for their latest efforts to show results.

“We have no right-hand-drive products now in the North American line,” Thomas S. McDaniel, president of General Motors Asian and Pacific Operations Ltd., noted at a press preview of the annual show. “Opel (General Motors’ German subsidiary) . . . offers both. We have plans. You won’t see it in the next couple of years, but by the mid- to late 1990s, I think you’ll see a range of products in the North American line that offer right-hand drive.”

Cadillacs will be available with right-side drive by the late 1990s, McDaniel said.

The few models of right-side-drive vehicles already on sale in Japan that are made either in the United States or by American-owned firms such as Opel have shown dramatic sales growth in the past year, despite a slowdown in overall auto sales in Japan.

Sales in Japan of the right-side-drive Jeep Cherokee will jump to about 3,500 this year from 1,000 in 1992, said Chrysler President Robert Lutz, who is also attending the Tokyo car show. Lutz said Chrysler plans four new right-side-drive models for Japan in the next two to three years.

McDaniel said General Motors sales in Japan, including those from Opel and Saab--the Swedish auto maker in which it has invested--will jump to about 30,000 this year, up from about 11,500 in 1992. Fewer than 10% of last year’s sales were right-side-drive vehicles, while more than 30% of this year’s sales--about 12,000 vehicles--are right-side-drive Opels, he said.

Alexander J. Trotman, Ford Motor Co. chairman-elect, said the firm will launch sales in Japan early next year of a U.S.-built, right-side-drive version of the Ford Probe and a European-built, right-side-drive Ford Mondeo. As part of its efforts to expand sales, the auto maker is launching a credit company in Japan to provide dealer and customer financing, he added.