Sales numbers and titles are taken very, very seriously in the auto industry. More seriously even than magazine awards, JD Power titles or auto show prizes. And it looks like General Motors had the early lead in the industry's annual sales competition, but Toyota eked out the win, becoming the world's best-selling car-making company. And to their shame, GM claimed the victory only after counting the production of vehicles at a plant in China where GM was not the majority owner --- And that's not allowed. Did GM cheat? Well, as they say in NASCAR, "If you're not cheatin', you're not racin'".
The numbers are confusing because there's a big difference between "sales" and "production", and production of vehicles made in plants where less than 50% of the operation is controlled by another, outside firm. In fact, some car-makers have been known to add extra shifts in manufacturing plants right before the New Year's break, when most car companies shut down for a week or more, in order to "win" the production derby. Another outright sneaky tactic, in the past years when the "#1 sales" title was invariably one of the Big Three, one company making a sudden, massive and surprising sale of fleet, lease or daily rental vehicles could garner the prize. For instance, Ford controls Hertz, and it could have been arranged for Hertz to place an order for 15,000 Taurus sedans on November 31 or even later; we're not saying Ford ever actually did that, but if they did, it wouldn't be a surprise.
But today, with all business international, the only numbers which really matter are the ones which bring money into the company (and its home country), and for 2007, the title goes to Toyota, a company which started selling vehicles in the US in 1957. GM owned the title for 77 years; now it's time for others to take the baton and run ... and the winners are going to be running in a westerly direction, towards Korea, China, India and all of Indo-China and Toastmaster Asia, not east across the Pacific, at least not anymore, for some time to come. (Photo - The Toyota Camry, best-selling car in the USA, led the way for Toyota to grab the world sales title for the first time in 2007).
Industry weekly Automotive News reported that General Motors did have a solid 2007, with global sales
up 1.9 percent from 2006. But it is now the world's second-largest automaker. GM slipped well behind Toyota in global sales. GM sold 8,885,599 vehicles in 2007, while Toyota says it sold an estimated 9,370,000. Toyota will issue an official total in about a month.
It was widely reported in the final week of 2007 that the two automakers finished in a dead heat for the No. 1 spot. Here's why: In its total, GM includes 516,435 vehicles of the Wuling brand in China.
For the year 2007, Toyota sold a minimum of (their estimate, but trusted enough by Automotive News enough to use) 9.37 million cars and light trucks, a 6% raise from their 2006 total. GM sold 8.89 million vehicles in 2007, a rise of 1.9% from their 2006 numbers.
But GM owns only 34 percent of the Chinese company that produces Wuling vehicles, SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., a major automaker in China, owns 50.1 percent.
Industry weekly Automotive News follows the industry practice by including sales of only majority-owned subsidiaries in an automaker's global total. For instance, sales of Mazdas are not included in Ford Motor's total because Ford owns just 33.4 percent of Mazda. (Photo - Chevrolet's 2009 Camaro convertible concept has reawakened the "dream car" gene in many Americans; when it debuts next year, how many will be sold remains to be seen, but GM, Ford and Chrysler have all successfully used the "retro craze" to their advantage in the past decade).
General Motors was founded by William C. Durant on September 16th, 1908, as a Delaware corporation, with its headquarters in Detroit, MI. Prior to the formation of GM, Durant had bought out Buick Motor Company in 1904 and four years later attempted to merge it with Ford Motor Company, and a few others, which have long since faded into the pages of history before the formation of GM.
Durant formed GM to create one large corporation that could cover the car market from top to bottom; as many of us whose family's bought GM products throughout the 1950s, '60s and into the 1980s, a family would start-out buying a Chevrolet, then move into a Pontiac, then an Oldsmobile or a Buick, depending how "sporting" your mom or dad might have been, and then, finally, into a Cadillac. There was no place in the GM "buying system" for an individual, nor in the corporation; the corporation had traditionally been led by white men, generally Catholics, and an unmarried man or a man who headed a family with no children was, at best, a questionable man, and he would never advance in the GM hierarchy. This all remains true, to a lesser degree then in the '80s and past years, but still true enough, to this day.
These are the car companies bought-out by Durant, and important GM stakes purchased much later in Japan-based companies and others (ie, Saab of Sweden), all of it starting with Durant's purchase of the Buick Motor Company in 1904, and most-recently, controlling interests in South Korea's Dewie, now known as GM DAT, General Motors Daewoo Auto & Technology; GMDAT gives GM automotive and light truck manufacturing and assembly facilities in China, Thailand, India, Colombia, South Korea and Vietnam. India's Tata, which only recently brought out the $2,500 (wholesale) Nano small sedan, bought Daewoo's truck division. Other early and more-recent GM purchases:
- Oldsmobile Motor Company (1908, though the REO, Ransom Eli Olds, company remained independent and came to be known as White Truck Company and REO Trucks; yes, the "REO Speedwagon" was a real truck, not just a Canadian rock group's name)
- Oakland Motor Company (1909, which became Pontiac)
- Cadillac Automobile Company (1909)
- Rapid Motor Vehicle Company/GMC (1909)
- Chevrolet (1915)
- Saturn (1989; Created by GM)
- Saab ('Svenska Aeroplan Aktie Bolag' or Swedish Airplane Corporation; GM bought 50% in 1990, and the rest of the company from Trollhattan, Sweden in 2000)
- Isuzu (GM bought 49% of the company in 1971; that stake was reduced to 12% in 2002)
- Subaru (GM bought a 20% stake in Subaru's parent, Fuji Heavy Industries, in 1999; since then, GM has been selling-off their share, mostly to Toyota, and has stated its intention to fully divest their stake in the company) (Photo - A 1958 Toyopet Crown, similar to first Toyotas sold in the US by "North Hollywood Toyota", the nation's first Toyota dealer; we imagine the family which owns that dealership is doing pretty well these days ... And deservedly so).
Toyota is now not only the largest car-maker in terms of sales, but also ranks first in net worth, revenue and profit. It is also the only car-maker found on something called 'BrandZ', which, beginning in 1998, has collected data annually from consumers, with hundreds of people interviewed asked to evaluate brands, in a competitive context, from a category they shop in. In that respect, and to those many interviewees, when shopping for a car, Toyota is the world's #1 car-maker.
And no matter how many plants Toyota, and all the other "captive imports", build in other countries, and no matter how many people they employ in those countries, and no matter how many vehicles they sell in other countries, all the profit that company clears from all those nations goes right back, in Toyota's case, to Japan ... and not even Tokyo; no, Toyota is actually based in a place called (of all things) Toyota City, which is outside Nagoya, about 300-or-so miles south of Tokyo. One of of its big subsidiaries, Daihatsu (which is Toyota's small car expert; they make the "kei cars", those with engines under 650cc, which qualify for big tax breaks in Japan), is located in Osaka, much closer to Nagoya than it is to Tokyo. (Photo - 1967 Toyota 2000GT, about 400 were built by Yamaha for racing homologation purposes, it was campaigned unsuccessfully in Japan and the US, but co-starred in the James Bond film, "You Only Live Twice" --- Those of you movie buffs who remember the "headquarters building" of the "Osato Chemical Company" should know that the facade used in the film was actually the front of the Tokyo Hilton International; I stayed there in 1979 on my first trip to Japan ... The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles has a 2000GT in their collection).
The company was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda as a spinoff from his father (Sakichi Toyoda)'s 
company, Toyota Industries, to create automobiles. Toyoda was, at first, a maker of looms and sewing machines and all sorts of sophisticated automatic mechanical equipment basic to what we call the "shmata" business; literally, the "rags", or clothing business. When Toyoda first came to the US (and Kiichiro visited the US, enjoying tours, especially, of Ford's huge Rouge Factory, the only plant in the world at the time with raw materials coming in one end and completed cars driving out the other), it was hoped that the American public and western journalists would pronounce the family and company name as it was pronounced in Japan, with the emphasis on the last syllable, ie, "Toy-yo-da'", but all things being equal, creating the name "Toyota" was just the first smart move of many the Japanese company would make here in the US. (Photo - Chevrolet's Volt at the recent Los Angeles Auto Show; GM says that Chevrolet is their "green" division and Volt its first product, maybe available in 2010, maybe not, but GM says it'll be able to reach 600 miles on 12 gallons of gasoline which feed a small engine which charges and then recharges batteries as needed to make electricity which drive the motors inside each wheel and thus move the car ... It all sounds a little Rube Goldberg-ish, no? But in theory, it should work well, and if they bring it out, we'd buy one!).
Toyota also owns and operates Lexus and Scion, has a majority shareholding in Daihatsu Motors, and has minority shareholdings in Fuji Heavy Industries, Isuzu Motors, and the engine, motorcycle and marine craft manufacturer, Yamaha Motors. In fact, one of the most popular and legendary cars ever made by Toyota, their 2000GT sports car, driven by no less than Sean Connery/James Bond in 1967's "You Only Live Twice", and raced in the US by no less than Dan Gurney, but to little success, was built entirely by Yamaha. Toyota now includes 522 subsidiaries, which is why it is still known and respected (and even feared) as the biggest of the Japanese "keiretsus", or conglomerates, some of which might well be considered monopolies in the US; before WWII, these conglomerates were called "zaibatsus".
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