Toyota extends lead over Volkswagen as world’s biggest car maker
Toyota is the biggest car company in the world – by sales volume – for the second year in a row after extending its lead over Germany’s Volkswagen Group to take out global honours – and ending General Motors’ 90-year run at the top of the US charts.
Japanese car giant Toyota reported 10.496 million vehicles as sold in 2021 – including its luxury division Lexus and small-car specialist Daihatsu.
It was a 10 per cent increase compared to the prior year – though not an annual global sales record for the company – as Toyota initially was unaffected by production slowdowns during the global coronavirus pandemic
Of that tally, more than 8.3 million Toyota vehicles were sold outside Japan – including in Australia where Toyota has been the top-selling car company for 19 years in a row.
The Volkswagen Group (also known as Volkswagen AG) – which also includes affiliated brands such as Audi, Skoda, Seat, Cupra, Porsche, Lamborghini, and Bentley – reported a combined total of 8.882 million cars as sold in 2021, a decrease of 4.5 per cent amid production slowdowns caused by semiconductor shortages and assembly-line absenteeism due to the coronavirus.
It was the sixth time the past 10 years Toyota has topped the global new-car sales rankings, claiming victory in 2021 and 2020 as well as a four-year run from 2012 to 2015.
Volkswagen topped the global new-car sales charts in the four years from 2016 to 2019.
US giant General Motors, which lost its world Number One status in 2008 after a record 77-year winning streak, is no longer in the running for the top sales spot globally after scaling back its international operations and focusing on China (2.9 million sales in 2021) and North America (2.2 million sales in 2021).
General Motors briefly reclaimed the top spot globally in 2011 – when it reported 9.03 million vehicles as sold, ahead of Volkswagen (8.36 million) and Toyota (7.95 million).
The battle for global sales supremacy now seems set to be a two-way battle for the next decade or so – between Toyota and Volkswagen – who have swapped the lead for the past 10 years.
Both Toyota and Volkswagen have announced billion-dollar investments in electric and autonomous cars to be introduced over the next decade.
However Toyota has consistently said it will continue to also offer a range of hybrid, petrol, and diesel vehicles to cater to the needs of different customers in different regions.
Toyota ended General Motors’ 77-year reign as the world’s top-selling vehicle manufacturer in 2008, when it sold 8.97 million vehicles compared to GM’s tally of 8.35 million vehicles in that calendar year.
The Toyota figure included sales from its Hino truck brand and Daihatsu small-car brand. The GM figure included all nameplates such as Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, Pontiac, Vauxhall, Opel, Holden and others.
Toyota continued to be the world’s top-selling vehicle manufacturer for three years in a row (2008, 2009 and 2010), although its lead over General Motors narrowed in 2010, when Toyota sold 8.42 million vehicles to General Motors’ tally of 8.39 million.
The short-lived recovery of General Motors was largely driven by the booming Chinese new-car market. In 2010, General Motors sold more cars in China than it did in North America for the first time.
In 2011 GM regained the global sales lead ahead of Toyota, selling 9.03 million vehicles ahead of Volkswagen (8.16m) and Toyota (7.95m), which was affected by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 and floods in Thailand in October 2011.
Today, however, General Motors is a shadow of its former self, posting five years in a row of global sales decline.
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