Since the 1990s, new production trends have been evident in the Asian automobile industry. Japan constituted 85.5% of the total amount of the motor vehicles production in Asia in 1990, but that figure fell to 57.6% by 2000. In contrast, China and India have increased their vehicle production thanks to huge foreign direct investment into their automobile sector. Southeast Asian countries, especially Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, have also experienced a rapid growth of the automobile industry, except during the recession period of the late 1990s. The spatial configuration of the Asian automobile production has gradually shifted from the concentrated system in one prominent country to a more dispersed multipolar system. This paper aims to discuss the Asian automobile industry from the viewpoints of 1) developmental processes, 2) location, and 3) the international division of labor, mainly focusing on Southeast Asia and India. The following results are obtained. Because of the lack of indigenous vehicle manufacturers (except India), Japanese motor companies have played an important role in the development of the automobile industry since the initial stage. They have set up new assembly plants, collaborated with local business groups, or they participated financially and technically in national policy concerning vehicle manufacturing, especially in Malaysia. Up to the 1980s they had enjoyed the position of the market leader, but from the mid-1990s the market competition became more intense due to US and European vehicle manufactures establishing subsidiaries one after another in these countries. In Thailand, car assembly plants have been concentrated within the Bangkok Metropolitan Area, including the eastern seaboard region, which has been developed as a new industrial area, 80-120 km from the capital. On the other hand, five metropolitan areas in India - Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Pune, Kolkata (Calcutta) and Chennai (Madras) - developed agglomerations of the automobile industry by the 1970s. After the implementat