Toyota Motor took the global automotive sales lead from General Motors, selling 2.41m vehicles to GM’s 2.25m over the first three months of the year.
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GM said its first-quarter sales dropped across the globe by less than 1%, but Toyota said its sales were up 2.7% during the January-through-March period, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
AP said GM posted record sales in three of its four regions, but a 10% drop in North America pulled down the overall numbers. Sales were up 8% outside of North America.
Mike DiGiovanni, GM’s executive director of global markets and industry analysis, told the news agency Toyota outsold GM in the first quarter of last year, too, yet GM was able to retake the lead by the end of the year.
He reportedly said the company is more focused on turning around its North American operations and becoming profitable worldwide than it is on beating Toyota.
“We obviously want to win, and we’d like to be No. 1 in sales at the end of the year,” he said. “But really our focus right now is on profitable, sustainable growth across the world.”
