Wall Street's attention has been focused on U.S. automakers recently, but car companies are also struggling overseas. Witness Toyota Motors (TM: sentiment, chart, options), which has twice slashed its forecast for 2008 sales amid an increasingly challenging macro environment. Today, the picture grew even more bleak for TM when Fitch Ratings warned that it may strip the Japanese firm of its "AAA" credit rating.

In a release, Fitch executive Tatsuya Mizuno said the ratings company will determine whether "Toyota can show sufficient resilience against the adversities the industry is facing in order to determine whether its AAA rating remains appropriate." The review is expected to be complete within several weeks.

U.S.-traded shares of Toyota are down more than 2% this morning, having recovered slightly from their intraday low of $61.75. Meanwhile, option players are overwhelmingly betting on more downside for this struggling auto concern. During the past 10 days, TM has racked up a put/call ratio of 9.52 on the International Securities Exchange, suggesting that bearish bets have been nearly 10 times more popular than their bullish counterparts in the past 2 weeks.