'GM Back On Track to Becoming the Largest Automaker, Again'

GM Back On Track to Becoming the Largest Automaker, Again

08/21/09 06:13

Since 1931 until 2007, General Motors became the global auto manufacturing leader. For 77 consecutive years, it did not went down on its throne. That's almost as old as my grandfather. But in 2008, Japanese automaker Toyota snatched the long earned title from GM.

After a lot of unfortunate events; to selling brands, closing plants, to bankruptcy and finally got revived by a new management, it seems like General Motors is right back on the competition track again and is determined to get back its title.

In 2008, Toyota managed to snatched the title because of its 274,000 unit sales lead over the Detroit-based automaker in the first half of the year. But in the same period for 2009, for the first half of the year, General Motors, though the help of its new management, did pretty well in sales and closed the gap against Toyota's sales by just a little more than 11,000 units.

Toyota experienced 26% decrease in their sales for the first six months of 2009, as compared to the first 6 months of 2008. Their 2009 first half sales only amounted to 3,564,105 units. General Motors on the other hand experience a 21.8% decrease for the first of 2009 compared from 2008's first half, amounting to 3,552,722, just 11k+ less than Toyota's.

At the moment, Toyota is #1, Detroit's General Motors is still ranked as #2 for 2009, while the #3 and #4 were a surprise on the list, Volkswagen and Hyundai-Kia respectively. While Ford, the only automaker to have avoided bankruptcy in Detroit, is trailing at #5, thanks to a whopping 30.6% sales drop.

The battle between Toyota and G.M. will always be first and second. Regardless of who's first. They both have different markets while G.M is big in China and South America Toyota does well in Japan and in the Middle East.

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