The Big 3 Detroit carmakers have been capturing the world’s headlines with their economic and product woes for the past several weeks, but the truth of the situation is that the whole industry is struggling. On the heels of the forecast of its first operating loss in 71 years, Toyota has also decided to push back development on its RWD sports car joint project with Subaru.

Subaru’s parent company, Fuji Heavy Industries, has been working with Toyota on the development of a new RWD sports car for about a year now, but the continuing soft market and poor 2009 outlook have led the companies to shelve work on the car. Saving production costs in a cash-strapped market is part of the reasoning, but also introducing a new car right now would almost certainly doom it to sales failure, according to Japan’s Nikkei.

But the Toyota-Subaru joint project isn’t alone. All new production projects are being reviewed in an effort to help realign investment and development budgets with newly reduced profit forecasts. Last month the Japanese carmaker cut its future profit figures by 56% thanks primarily to poor sales in Europe and the U.S.

The much-anticipated RWD sports car hasn’t been canceled altogether, however – at least not yet. It is still scheduled to begin production, but not until 2012 of later. Plans had previously put the car’s launch in late 2011, branded as a Scion in the U.S.

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