After 77 years as the largest automaker in the world, GM has finally been dethroned by Toyota. Toyota reported 8.97 million sales in 2008, roughly 616,000 more than GM's 8.36 million units.
"The challenges in the global financial markets, including credit tightening, the drop in commodity prices, and economic uncertainty continue to negatively impact overall demand for new vehicles," said Jonathan Browning, GM's vice president for global sales, service and marketing. "For the total global industry, we saw about 3.5 million fewer vehicles sold in 2008 than the previous year."
Toyota's advancement over GM was more a factor of how much each companies sales dropped in 2008 rather than how much they gained. Toyota reported sales down 4% globally while GM's sales fell 10.8% worldwide. Both companies posted their biggest losses in the U.S., where the recession has severely curtailed demand. GM's sales in the U.S. were down 22.7% in 2008 while Toyota's fell 15.4%.
It's not all bad news for GM, though. While the North American and European markets took a big hit, down 21.1% and 6.5% respectively, the company actually increased sales in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East (which GM groups together when tallying sales) by 3.2%. In the Asia-Pacific region, GM posted a 2.7% increase in sales. Thanks to those increases and the troubles in North America, GM sold 5.37 million vehicles outside the U.S. in 2008, totaling 64% of its global volume, up from 59% in 2007.
"GM's 2008 sales performance shows that we are continuing to take advantage of new emerging market opportunities and are meeting customer needs with fuel-efficient products that offer compelling design and great value," said Browning. "We saw sales volume increases in the key four emerging markets of Brazil (up 10 percent), Russia (up 30 percent), India (up 9 percent), and China (up 6 percent)."
Despite the trouble, GM COO Fritz Henderson told reporters at the Automotive News World Congress that keeping the title of "world's largest automaker" isn't especially important to him. Rather, Henderson's concern lies with making GM strong financially.