Hanging Chads! Automotive News declares Toyota beat GM in 2007
We'll soon need Florida's State Supreme Court to step in and decide this one, as Automotive News is reversing on its report yesterday that General Motors had outsold Toyota globally in 2007 to declare Toyota the winner today. To be fair, yesterday's report that GM had outsold Toyota was based on a Reuters source who claimed the Japanese automaker had sold 9.366 million vehicles in 2007 to GM's 9,369,524 vehicles. Toyota, however, is not scheduled to reveal the exact number of vehicles it sold worldwide in 2007 until later this month.
Regardless of the exact number of vehicles Toyota says it sold last year, Automotive News is declaring it the World's Largest Automaker in 2007 based on the fact that GM included some 516,435 sales from the Chinese Wuling brand. GM only owns 34 percent of Wuling, the majority of which is owned by SAIC. Normally automakers don't report sales for brands in which they don't own a majority interest (that's why Mazda sales are not reported by Ford), and in this case Automotive News is subtracting Wuling sales from GM's total, which drops it down to 8,885,599 units. Toyota's easily got that beat regardless of the exact figure it eventually reports.
From the cheap seats, we can't tell you how much either automaker really cares if it's crowned the World's Largest Automaker in 2007. Nor can we say whether GM including sales figures for a brand that it technically doesn't own is a deliberate play on their part or something completely innocuous and not worth reading into. We'll leave that up to you.
[Source: Automotive News]
Get a WordPress.com Blog
_opt_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg "2011 Audi A8: Live from Miami")
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
J.Crew 1:34PM (1/24/2008)
Trying to make too much drama here...
Reply
AlexP 1:35PM (1/24/2008)
BUT JOHN I THOUGHT YOU WERE BIASED TOWARDS DOMESTICS
:rolleyes:
Reply
Mike 2:29PM (1/24/2008)
Yea I know, kinda funny.
Andrew 4:54PM (1/24/2008)
Bias and misinformation are two totally different things.
Russell 1:42PM (1/24/2008)
OK the world is about to end. LOL
Reply
Freestyle4x4f150 1:45PM (1/24/2008)
The Japanise and Chinese are taking over the world! Oh well at least we have Hollywood and the entertainment industry as our #1 export....for now
Russell 2:04PM (1/24/2008)
looks like TM is a good stock to buy.
http://blog.vuzap.com
overengineered 1:45PM (1/24/2008)
They were cheating... :-D
Reply
JayP 1:51PM (1/24/2008)
Now that this drama is over- GM, get to quality over quantity.
Reply
Tagg 2:06AM (1/25/2008)
Amen!
GM needs to be profitable, not the #1 company in high rebate sales.
As for quality, the new G8 I sat in at the Detroit show is not the silver bullet people think. Its interior is cheap and strangely laid out with all door controls in the center console. Maybe it drives great but really lacks the refinment I expected in a brand flagship.
Mr. Oak 1:48PM (1/24/2008)
That'll change again in six months.
Reply
Andrew 2:48PM (1/24/2008)
I don't really care one way or the other, as I'm not a fan of any brands from either manufacturer, but how do you know that will change? Fleet sales will remain roughly the same, some of the bread and butter cars will sell as usual, the Malibu might pick up more interest. Either way, you're speculating when, for all you know, GM is on a downhill slide.
Mr. Oak 3:47PM (1/24/2008)
Andrew, it is called speculation. Thus far I haven't wrong about much. All of the Lambdas are selling strong, the CTS & Malibu's first full year, G8, Astra. GM is really rolling out a long list of new product, thus far, all excellent offerings. Even the now long in the tooth Cobalt is gaining momentum.
The Enclave, CTS and Malibu, are currently hurting mostly the European models. Not unlike what Lexus, Infiniti and Acura did in the early 90s. However, the Japanese luxury offerings have gone soft and bland. The G35 being the notable exception.
Remember what a dismal performer the previous gen. Malibu was. Current one is already taking sales from both Toyota and Honda. CAFE and the economy are the biggest obstacles that GM faces right now.
Here is another limb I am willing to go out on, Tundra won't do as well this year.
Andrew 4:35PM (1/24/2008)
I will agree with the Malibu comments. It's a paradigm buster, which GM desperately needs right now. The CTS, in my opinion, is tired. The Tundra's marketing campaign is kicking ass, and I can't imagine that not translating into sales.
I have high hopes for GM, but we'll just have to wait and see.
mike 1:48PM (1/24/2008)
According to businessweek it takes GM 22.2 hours to make one car and it Takes Toyota 22.1.
I was simply shoked at how much GM improved in that sphere, just look at the graph.
http://www.tengears.com/home/2008/1/24/detroit-is-still-behind-despite-hard-won-gains.html
From 28.0 to 22.2 for GM, Ford went from 25.7 to 23.2 and Chrysler 31.3 to 23.4, while all japanese took a hit in that area, especially Nissan they are up from 17.4 hours to 20.5 per vehicle...ALL NUMBERS ARE FROM 2000 to 2006
Reply
AlexP 1:52PM (1/24/2008)
wtf is up with Mazda's reliability score in this
And stop advertising your crappy blog, ugh.
Guenther 2:09PM (1/24/2008)
Funny- we could statistically show that work hours needed to build a vehicle is inversely proportional to the quality of the product. This of course NOT TRUE, but we could make it look that way.
Dieter 1:49PM (1/24/2008)
Ooooh! I'm on the edge of my seat.
Reply
mikomi 1:50PM (1/24/2008)
Personal opinions aside: Congratulations.
Now hurry up and give us a sports car and increase your quality Toyota, #1 is a long way to fall.
Reply
B-Rad 2:19PM (1/24/2008)
Congratulations? On what? An unconfirmed figure?
This story needs to be dropped until Toyota releases their numbers.