When Fitch Ratings decided that even the brightest, best-organised and best-positioned player in the global auto industry could no longer support a coveted triple-A rating, it did not have to look terribly far for evidence that it was right.

Full-year profits will be 74 per cent lower than last year, production is being slowed in various spots throughout the Toyota empire, and the company has been forced to introduce no-interest loans as enticements in the US and Europe: the last bastion of company pride and confidence.

In difficult times – and especially with the credibility of the ratings agencies themselves in some doubt, a triple-A rating must, absolutely, be a guarantee of resilience: Toyota held out bravely on behalf of corporate Japan, and the party is now over.

But looking behind the Fitch Ratings downgrade is a far more troubling picture, and one that could easily undermine the entire world view of both the auto-makers and those who invest in them.

After all, we all knew earlier this summer that the US and European consumers were eventually going to capitulate to some degree: Fitch maintained its copper-bottomed ratings on Toyota through all of those worries, which suggests some other, bigger threat is sharpening its teeth. It is almost certainly the spectre of capitulation in Asia.

Toyota – along with other Japanese and European automakers – used to bask in a cloud of optimism over Asian growth: the idea that millions of Chinese, Indians and citizens of emerging economies everywhere would soon ditch their scooters in favour of a car.

That process has not stopped, but it has certainly slowed substantially and may be due for a much nastier spasm than anyone realises. The Chinese consumer, particularly, has shown himself to be a cautious beast, happily shelving plans for a new car when the economic outlook is dark, even if he can afford the purchase today.

Toyota itself has cut back its sales target in China this year by 100,000 vehicles – it should still have shifted 600,000 by the end of March 2009, but the company is now looking at 20% growth rates in China, rather than the 40% surge the market had been led to expect.

If that sort of wing-clipping takes place in India, Brazil, and Russia, it may be some years before Toyota is flying on its triple-A ratings again.

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