Toyota shoves Volkswagen aside, takes global auto sales crown

Toyota was the top automaker in global vehicle sales after the first nine months of this year, selling nearly 7.5 million vehicles, outpacing rivals General Motors and Volkswagen

Article is here.

 

Toyota led the way with reliability so now folks, especially the younger buyers, identify the name with a long lasting vehicle. That's important now that the average age of a car in the US is 11.5 years old.
As long time buyers of US brands, we're now on our second Toyota product (and first Lexus). There's a very good chance our next vehicle will be another Toyota product. (Our son will need a car when he returns to the US.)

 

I'd watch Hyundai/Kia carefully...........though they are admittedly down several points in size right now compared to VW, Toyota, and GM, they are growing fast enough worldwide that they could (eventually) threaten the leaders. Though they are having a difficult time (despite excellent products) breaking into the large-sedan and pickup truck categories, they are succeeding quite well in many others.

 

agreed, just rented a brand new Hyundai Tucson over the weekend (for the price of a compact) and I was really impressed with the entire vehicle with the exception of the wimpy sound system.

 

What's the point of bringing up Hyundai/Kia? It's so irrelevant to this discussion.

It's like someone posts an article about Star Wars beating out the latest James Bond in last weekend's box office and then someone goes "Watch out for Tomorrowland! They didn't do that well in the box office but I'll bring them up because I liked it"

 

Mordecai,
Ever compete? In case you missed the memo competition in the automotive world is a RACE. In races companies are always looking at competitors be it BMW, Mercedes or Kia in their rear view mirror. Ever seen an oval track? Well we live on one BIG blue oval track and all these companies are racing around the world competing with one another for the title. So bringing up another company is appropriate.

 

What I'd like to know which nation COLLECTIVELY has the highest sales taken together. Japan, US, or Germany. This is a global economy.

 

You have a fair point, but I still think it's irrelevant to bring up H/K into this discussion. The topic is Toyota catching up to VW for global auto sales crown after VW set to take the full years sale before all the diesel-gate scandal broke through. GM is mentioned as well since they had been the top auto brand for decades. And yet someone's first thought is to say "Hey, but Hyundai/Kia too!" It would be irrelevant if the current 4th place Nissan-Renault was brought up. Even more so to bring up the 5th place.

 

China has most sales per year, and reason VW is down now is due to drop of sales in China, where they sell huge amount of cars (over 3 million per year). Toyota on the other side is growing in China and has 3x lower sales there.. their problem is Japanese tax hike which dropped their sales in Japan this year.

 

Hyundai/KIA used to grow really fast in mid-2000's... now they have problems with overcapacity and dropping profits, together with quality issues, which is why they changed some of heads of the group.

So Hyundai is actually dropping sales YoY worldwide, as well as profit.

Growing manufacturers in 2015 are Ford (2.5%) and Honda (2.3%)... everyone else dropped, especially GM and VW which are exposed in China, where they sell huge part of their overall sales - 4m and 3m respectfully. China is now down for past 3 months, hence them dropping out of the race.

Japan also is suffering due to raised tax, but Toyota has had several good introductions there that softened the blow overall. Toyota is down in Japan, but up for the year everywhere else.

US market right now is peaked and European market is finally recovering, it has some ways to go... Developing markets are down this year due to recession and tax hikes.

So worldwide, except for USA, there is still room to grow sales significantly... question is just if we will ever have complete world doing great at the same time. If not, current levels are pretty darn high worldwide.

 

I saw Kia' $60,000+ "luxury car" at the O.C. International Auto Show a couple of weekends ago.

"Kia" and "luxury car"...now there's an oxymoron!!




Here's an article about it.

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Ahhh, yes, let me guess. You're in your 30's or 40's. I remember when they use to say the same thing about Toyota. "They make nice midget cars, but when I want a REAL car I buy a (insert US model here)". Then some new name arrived in the car market, something like "LEXUS". Strange name but a really nice car. You know the rest.

 

I remember when Nissan had such a bad reputation with their Datsun line that they totally dropped that name (at least from the US). Sometimes, you have to distance yourself from bad name recognition. Although Toyota has been a good name, they still wanted to distance themselves with a luxury line and created a separate line branded under the name Lexus (just for certain markets, like the US). Whereas Kia is simply adding a $60k+ car to their main division. This may come back to bite them, as their name is not as trustworthy in the US as other manufacturers, IMHO.

By the way, when you go to some other countries and, for instance, you see an RX, chances are it is branded as a "Toyota". "Lexus" is just for certain countries.

 

Have you test-driven a Cadenza or K900? The K900, especially, fills a market that is rapidly disappearing in this world of sport-orientation.....a no-nonsense, traditional, straight-luxury sedan that coddles you and floats down the road over bumps in comfort, making no pretense at being a sport-sedan. I'm honestly surprised that it doesn't sell more to previous owners of Lincoln Town Car, Cadillac DTS, Buick Lucerne, etc....that have been ignored by those manufacturers for years....although Cadillac and Lincoln, to their credit, both have new flagships coming up.

 

They still say that about Toyota, at least some people do :-)


As to Hyundai/KIA, I think they are currently stuck on what they want to do as a company. Do they build affordable and dependable cars or do they go for higher end market (and how?)? They dont know.

Which is why 7 days ago they reported Q2 2015:

Never good when company fails at their predictions.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/hyundai-...and-1445499078