Toyota Becomes New World #1

Motoring Channel Staff - 27/Apr/2007

Tokyo, Japan — It was only a matter of time before it happened, said the analysts, and now they've finally been proved correct. General Motors (GM) has finally been overtaken as the world's number one automobile maker, and Toyota is the company that replaces it at the top of the tree.

General Motors has subsidiaries all over the world, such as Saab in Sweden, Holden in Australia, Opel in Germany, and Daewoo in Korea, but even with its combined forces, the General couldn't hold back the rampaging Toyota, whose main subsidiary is Lexus, which happens to be the top selling luxury car brand in the America.

In 2006, Toyota's global vehicle sales were only slightly behind GMs. Toyota sold 9,018,000 cars, while GM sold 9,180,000, which saw the Japanese car maker trailing by 162,000 cars, which was the closest it had ever come to obtaining the title of the world's number one car maker.

Though the race isn't over yet - we're only a quarter of the way in - most analysts are predicting that Toyota will comfortably take out mantle by year's end, as the January to March quarter (2007), Toyota sold 2.34 million cars compared to GMs 2.26 million cars. 

General Motors is hoping that a number of new models in its North American range that will hit dealerships before the end of the decade will help claw back the numbers, but this year and probably the next one are likely to be won by Toyota.