What’s a few hundred thousand cars between close friends?
According the manufacturers’ respective tallies, General Motors and Toyota ended 2007 nearly tied for honors as the world’s biggest automaker.
General Motors announced this week it sold 9,369,524 cars in 2007. Toyota also reported this week that it sold 9.366 million cars last year, about 3,000 fewer vehicles than GM.
Toyota has steadily expanded its U.S. demand for small cars, particularly the hybrid market. Its Prius is the best-selling hybrid in the country. Toyota has also done well in the pick-up truck market, where the Tundra was named Truck of the Year by a respected national automotive publication.
A day later, however, the results got a little complicated. Toyota, not GM, was named the world’s largest manufacturer by Automotive News after it lowered GM’s original total from a venture in China.
Automotive News reported more than 516,000 produced by GM’s Wuling joint venture should be excluded, thus propelling Toyota to the top spot.
According to the publication, industry practice dictates that only vehicles from majority-owned subsidiaries should count in global totals.
General Motors owns about one-third of the SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co. that produces the vehicles, while Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. has 50.1 percent ownership.
Article Last Updated: January 25, 2008.
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A sports, travel and business journalist for more than 45 years, James has written the new car review column The Weekly Driver since 2004.
In addition to founding this site in 2004, James writes a Sunday automotive column for The San Jose Mercury and East Bay Times in Walnut Creek, Calif., and monthly auto review and wellness columns for Gulfshore Business, a magazine in Southwest Florida.
An author and contributor to many newspapers, magazines and online publications, co-hosted The Weekly Driver Podcast from 2017 to 2024.
