Toyota ended 2010 as the world's largest automaker despite suffering a series of recalls and safety issues.
Toyota overtook General Motors in terms of total vehicle sales in 2008, after GM had held top spot for nearly 80 years.
Toyota’s reputation for quality has suffered since, as it recalled over 10 million vehicles around the world for issues ranging from faulty floor mats to computer software faults. It hung onto to its #1 position however, with 2010 sales of 8.42 million vehicles, against GM’s 8.39 million.
Toyota's overall sales, including trucks from Hino and cars from Daihatsu, rose 8 percent from 2009 due to strong growth in China and other Asian countries.
Toyota insists it is targeting profits and quality rather than volume, however. "Being number one in terms of sales is not important for us," said spokesman Paul Nolasco. "Our objective is to become number one with the customer, in terms of service and customer satisfaction."
The battle for #1 spot, if you can call it that, is likely to be decided in Asia where sales growth has the greatest potential.
Meanwhile, GM, after a major restructuring in 2010 following its emergence from bankruptcy protection and a government bail-out, saw sales rise 12.2 percent in 2010, with a 28.8 percent leap in China. GM sales in America rose 6.3 percent.
For the first time ever, GM sold more vehicles in China than in the US.
But the title of world’s biggest automaker is not likely to remain a two-horse race, if VW lives up to its rhetoric at this year's Detroit auto show. Insisting it will become the largest carmaker in the world by 2018, VW intends to focus on the US market, where it has but a tiny market share at present.
In 2010 VW sold a paltry 257,000 cars in the US, while GM and Toyota sold around four million new cars between them.
Leading VW’s strategy is the new Passat, unveiled at the Detroit auto show. Slightly larger than the European model of the same name, it will be made in a brand new $1 billion assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, part of a $4 billion VW investment program in the US.
