NASHVILLE, Tenn. -

Toyota, recently plagued by the aftermath of both this past spring’s earthquake in Japan and the recent floods in Thailand, looks to be gaining ground with the release of a revamped model.

With the release of the new 2012 Camry, consumer interest in Toyota is on the rise, according to the Dataium ASI Index, a predictive indicator of automotive sales.

The brand’s climb was indicative of the entire index, which also moved slightly higher as a whole this past month.

The news from Toyota may not be surprising, since the newly designed Camry also had the highest month-over-month ASI gains for any individual model.

Taking note of the recent jump, the company contends that interest in the Toyota nameplate has almost returned to “pre-quake levels”

On top of this past month’s climibing sales and posting high gains in lead volume, the automaker also led all manufacturers by growing monthly unique visitors by more than 30 percent, the company noted.

"Demand for Japanese auto brands have nearly recovered to pre-quake levels, which should translate into market share gains in early 2012 and depending upon how aggressive factory incentives are, these gains may be seen as early as the last quarter of 2011," stated Jason Ezell, Dataium president.

“Also with the strong gains in consumer interest for the redesigned Camry, this trend may strengthen,” he added.

Moving on to highlight other units that saw considerable ASI gains this month, following the Camry were the Lexus GS 350 and Chevy Avalanche.

On the other hand, the Audi S4 and Mercedes E550 showed the greatest declines in this area.

And which manufacturers topped the index in terms of lead volume growth?

Volkswagen posted the highest increase in lead volume, up 77 percent from September, with Mercedes-Benz (48 percent), Saab (38 percent), Toyota (30 percent) and Ford (24 percent) rounding out the list of top five manufacturers.

Interestingly, contrary to the gains they enjoyed in September, a few luxury brands, including Porsche and BMW, posted declines, down 33 percent and 25 percent, respectively.

Summarizing this past month’s index results, Eric Brown, chief executive officer of Dataium, concluded, "We are now seeing the sales volume increases we predicted back in August and September. The recent upward revisions by industry forecasters reflect the auto shopper demand trends from the past several months."

Dataium offered the following chart to better illustrate Brown’s point: