Japan's auto makers have called on the Government to end the country's voluntary restraints on automobile exports to the United States when the fiscal year ends next March, a Government official said today.
According to the official, the auto makers told the head of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry that the quota, which puts a ceiling of 2.3 million vehicles on exports to the United States for the year ending in March, was no longer necessary. The executives said that the strengthening of the yen against the dollar, which makes Japanese products more expensive in the United States, would prevent them from selling many additional cars on the American market.
In the past year, the yen has risen by more than 35 percent against the dollar. Many Japanese manufacturers have raised prices to make up for the shift in exchange rates, while others have cut profit margins to keep prices steady and maintain their markets.
Japanese exports of cars, trucks and buses to the United States in the first six months of this year rose by 18.4 percent from the corresponding period last year, to 1,706,597 vehicles.
In a separate development, an official of the Nissan Motor Company, Japan's second-largest auto maker after Toyota, said Nissan would start increasing its imports of United States auto parts this month.
The Nissan official, Kenkichi Shibata, said the company would import 20,000 sealed beams a month, to be used in 10,000 trucks, from the GTE Products Corporation of Stamford, Conn. He refused to disclose the value of the parts.
Nissan's American subsidiary uses parts from GTE Products, ''so we know their products are reliable and of good quality,'' Mr. Shibata said.
The United States has long pressed Japanese auto makers to purchase more American-made auto parts. The Japanese, however, traditionally rely on long-term links with their affiliated suppliers, and foreign competitors argue that such close business relationships exclude them from selling in Japan. American sales here amount to less than 1 percent of the auto parts market. END OF QUOTA DOUBTED Top American auto makers expressed doubts yesterday that Japan would accede to the request of its automobile industry that the voluntary export quota be lifted.
The Ford Motor Company said that even with the voluntary restraints, Japanese auto makers had been expanding their share of the American market because of their increasing assembly capacity in this country. The General Motors Corporation declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the United States trade representative's office said that export restraints, voluntary or imposed, were not the answer to the current trade problem with Japan. ''The U.S. has not asked for the restraints and has always maintained that the only answer is for Japan to open its markets to U.S. products,'' said Gary Holmes, a spokesman.