So did Toyota beat General Motors to the title of world top-selling car maker in 2007?
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It’s still an unanswered question, at least until Toyota’s statisticians crunch the premliminary data released earlier this month again.
As of last Wednesday, only General Motors had announced a precise tot-up of 9,369,524 vehicles sold world-wide in 2007, up 3%. Toyota had earlier this month announced preliminary sales of a rounded-up 9.37m, up 6%.
Neck and neck? Not quite, according to a US-based auto industry trade paper. Their reckoning was that GM counted in about 510,000 vehicles made by a joint venture with Wuling in which GM has only a 30% stake and so the sales don’t count as GM sales.
Ding! In the winner’s corner, Toooooyooootaaaaa!, by a half-million units.
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By GlobalDataThis argument could run and run, of course. Ford, if memory serves, has just 30% of Mazda, and, again, if memory serves, counts in the brand’s sales as part of its overall unit tally. And the Japanese company’s figures showed up in yesterday’s much-improved Ford group 2007 full-year results, of course.
Renault counts Alliance partner Nissan’s contribution into its financial results and includes the part-held Nissan and wholly-owned Samsung brands in its overall group unit sales tally so we wouldn’t really have an issue with GM counting in sales by a minority-held Chinese JV.
And, besides, Toyota is on record is saying being World Number One for unit sales is not its priority (profit is).
At Ford, as noted earlier, CEO Alan Mulally and management team still had to reach for the red pen to write “full-year net loss $US2.7bn” in their ledger but it was nonetheless a substantial improvement on the $12.6bn in the red for 2006. Painful though 16-odd plant closings and about 40,000 worker buy-outs may be for those directly affected, there are signs that the turnaround plan is going, well, to plan.
Or maybe not – just one day before announcing the 2007 result, Mulally told a Detroit auto industry conference that the Blue Oval could yet have to make more cuts if new products fail to draw US buyers in.
He also hinted at more smaller cars for the US range (still dominated by the huge F-series truck line), starting, as we’ve previously reported, with the Verve sedan spin-off of the next-generation Fiesta hatchback range Ford Europe will reveal at Geneva next March.
Across at Chrysler, this week’s main news was the restructuring of product development, the latest in a string of changes since private equity company Cerberus took over, putting former Home Depot chief Bob Nardelli in charge.
We’ll be watching Chrysler with interest this year. Its latest new products – the critical Ram truck launched at Detroit last week and the new minivans that arrived in North American showrooms at the back end of 2007 (we get it here next month) – seem to have attracted lukewarm rather than rave reviews and there are still mutterings from dealers over there about over-complex model lines and option packages and poor quality interiors (a criticism also made in export markets).
Having recently attracted some strong new marketing muscle from Lexus and Toyota, a new purchasing chief (also from Home Depot), inked a small car deal for South America with Nissan (on top of the earlier deal with China’s Chery) and now shaken-up product development, it’s clear Cerberus and Nardelli mean business and it’ll be interesting to see how they do.
It’s already clear they’re willing listen to the dealers and act fast – the company told its US outlets this week it was already simplifying the new Dodge Journey model line-up and option packages while upgrading and simplifying standard equipment and option availability on other lines.
Outside the US, our own emerging markets expert Mark ‘Coolbear’ Bursa ran an eye over the possibilities for MG arising from the SAIC-Nanjing merger and Lancia has just entered the virtual world of Second Life in an intriguing approach that is, we believe, an auto industry first.
Enjoy your weekend.
Graeme Roberts
News Editor
