Toyota released global sales and production numbers for January 2013 today. Toyota is making good on its plans to catch its breath after a breakneck race back to the top of the pile. Toyota said its 2013 production would be flat, and flat it was with an 0.3 percent gain over January 2012. Let’s have a look at the other contenders.
| Tracking the world’s largest | |||
| automakers: January 2013 | |||
| Jan ’13 | Jan ’12 | YoY | |
| Toyota | 812,002 | 809,630 | 0.3% |
| GM | ./. | ./. | ./. |
| Volkswagen | 749,900 | 652,400 | 14.9% |
| Source: Company data. Toyota: Production. VW: Deliveries. | |||
At GM, there is nothing to see. Very oddly for a global company, GM does not release monthly global data. It only releases quarterly, as part of its earnings report. We will have to wait until early May to receive reliable numbers. From then on, we will try to interpolate monthly data as we did last year.
Volkswagen continues to power ahead globally with a nearly 15 percent gain in January. The racer for “World’s Largest Automaker 2013” promises to be interesting. Volkswagen stands a good chance to displace GM from rank 2. GM and Volkswagen have a theoretical chance to win the title.Volkswagen would have to gain a little more than 10 percent over the year to reach Toyota and 10 million.
We shall see.
Why this obsession with being the biggest? That hardly means you are the best or most profitable.
+10
If you would have said that a year ago in a Detroit bar, you would not live today to say it again.
VW’s Jan numbers are inflated because of the timing of Chinese New Year – it was a little later this year which did not impact Jan’s sales as was the case last year. VW’s Feb numbers should be flat, if not lower than last year.
Or in Toyota City or Wolfsburg, for that matter.
Let me go ahead and be the first… Volkswagen unreliable blah blah blah… Made in Mexico blah blah blah…
Toyota boring blah blah blah…
Government Motors blah blah blah… Obama blah blah blah…
The easiest way for both VW and GM to beat Toyota in sales number is to merge. WuLing + Santana FTW!
Cannot merge Wuling as they(GM) have only a 10% stake in the Company. Makes you wonder why it is included in “GM” figures
GM owns 34% of SAIC GM Wuling, but still a minority. Some “creative” accounting going on there, since I believe the sales do get rolled into GM.
I thought it was only 10%?? Anyway the artistic number crunchers want to add the total to GM’s overall tally.
Technically GM should not be on this list because there are no numbers to support the “assumption” that it comes second. VW should be second and Renault/Nissan 3rd… or is that Ford?
Ford is having a lot of problems outside of the lucrative pickup business in North America. Currently ranked 7th globally.