How you can overtake something which was never lost? Or I miss something? Does Toyota does not plan to sell 10 million cars in 2009? They almost there in 2007. GM was always the largest vehicle manufacturer, followed by Ford and Chrysler until 2-3 years ago (or even less). The question is: does GM plan to sell 10 million vehicles in 2007, 2008 & 2009.

Somewhere along the line I called a photo finish for the year and an otherwise forgettable moron lambasted me for it. If page 2 would ever work maybe I could dig up the moron’s name.

ah hah said the blindman, i am not the only one who can not access page 2. you did call it ricardo i remember it well and that guy needlessly blasted you for it.

Also of note … ‘Lambo’ has overtaken ‘peasant Piablo’ as the biggest chimp on this site.

lol, I was wondering about page 2 also. I had to use the search to look back at something from last week. On the plus side, the search works pretty good.

Still cant beat a personal record from 1978? Thats 29 years. Maybe they have been doing something wrong at The General.
But it does look like eventually Toyota will be the first with 10 million boring cars sold in a year.
They should be so proud!

It was Inline6, and I even said that GM offset the shortfall in Q3 …
.
Comment by RicardoHead, posted on October19 at 2:26 pm
…. “Mind you, Inline6, that the 4% rise in one quarter (Q3) effectively
…. offsets a 1% shortfall over 4 quarters – hence a potential photo finish.
…. GM’s doing strongly abroad and has some new highly anticipated models
…. coming out domestically, so as I said it will be fun to watch.”

Autonut – Toyota had the #1 spot in the 2nd quarter, GM won it back in the 3rd quarter.

strong sales of the opel corsa. grannies mus be lapping them up

Wow. The difference between those earning numbers for Toyota and GM are staggering. 7.06 million cars sold at 2,123 less profit per car than Toyota. Brought to you by your friendly UAW representative.

GM is bigger than Toyota so why is this news ? Toyota earns more money than GM though Sounds about right
GM still sucks

Wow, I won’t lie, I’m surprised. But good job GM I suppose, I’ll give credit where credit is due.

1115: Well actually up until this point Toyota had been the largest automaker in the world for a little under a year I believe, but this changes things back.

California was/is the first state to sell more omports then domestics.
Thats why Cali is burning today.
Thats why I buy domestics. I dont want my state to be punished by god for buying an import, even though domestics are such pure crap. Got to take the good with the bad.

God hates Jap cars especially Toyotas. Theres no argument there.
P.S. Is it insulting to use the term Jap? If not I will stop using it.

nah swervy we covered that debate a few months back and figured jap was no more racist than hillbilly or redneck.

May be at the end of the year Toyota will suspass Gm, may be not. I’m a GM an anyway for many reasons: better cars than Toy, at least here in Europe where no Toy car can beat any Opel car; cheaper price for consumers, since Opels are much less expensive, more economic and less polluting than Toy’s cars; finally a real fairplay that Toy lacks totally. Profits of TOYota are of course much higher than GM for 3 main reasons:
1) Japan car market is closed to foreign competitors and at home Toy retains 40% of market share pushing up fat profits.
2) super undervalued yen allows fat profits elsewhere in the world making Toy gaining unfair competitive advantage
3) where Toy produces locally, it pays workers half than competitors; this inflate unfairly its profits and depletes richness locally
TOYota still sucks
Best regards

Volume is nothing without profit. I’m genuinely happy for GM, especially since I think the products are coming around. I bet any GM exec would still like to swap places with their Toyota counterpart. A couple years back when GM was still the undisputed volume king, with its profits, Toyota could write a check and buy ALL of Ford, GM, and DaimlerChrysler. Hopefully smacking down a few UAW contracts will help keep costs low and profits high.

SwerveEarly, your interest in political correctness is almost humorous, considering the usual insults that sometimes fly in these posts. Although I am not Japanese, I think “Jap” is considered more derogatory.

Ricardo, nobody beat you up since you have all extremities working to type (then again somebosy might beat you up and you managing correspondence with XXI-st digit). To clarify my point: up until 2007 GM was or even maybe still is the largest vehicle producer. It is apparent from GM statements that they will not be able to sustain that position. There will be a day and time when Toyota will take the lead. Toyota was never #1 and until 2 years ago not even #2. This is called momentum, which Toyota may screw up with their quality quagmires.

Live & prosper and don’t cry about being beaten up, like a little girl. Calling others names even when loosing an argument isn’t becoming either.

Oh Autoslut, who’s calling anyone names?

I didn’t even argue as you claim – just said it was gonna be a photo-finish for 2007, and it will be. I also said in that thread that I don’t doubt Toyota will take the #1 spot – just maybe not in 2007.

The world needs boring transport appliances and that is what Toyota provides. In fact, they should be thanked, because as a result GM is figuring out that they need to put some form of fun in their cars to move them, so now if I need a fun, highly reliable, cheap-to-operate whip I actually have a choice. In the unlikely event that Ford would catch a clue, then I could have more of a choice, but I won’t hold my breath unless Deanster comes near (in which case it’s a matter of survival).

Good.

Who would have guessed this ten years ago?

The world realized Toyota’s are boring I guess.

Yes its burning over here in cali. Saw a torched Civic sitting out in front of a burned up $700,000 house

damn rompn4x i live in corona and work in riverside, the whole friggin place is covered in smoke and ashes today.

yea toyota is boring.but it makes gud cars.
SWERVEEARLY californai may have been the first state that imports outsold domestics. but the fact is anything that starts in california always happens every where else,sooner or later.
the only reason GM is bigger than toyota is that it is very tallented at producing crap.

well done GM.CONGRATS

well done……..

Toyota factory that produces Corollas and Vibes are in California. CTS you got to get one: it’s more then domestic for you it is neighborly. Is there GM factory in Cali?

Doesn’t matter who sells more (or less). Toy Ota still can’t beat GM, and never will. They can’t even beat Honda, for Christ’s sake! With reliability issues everywhere (how many vehicles did they recall again recently, 470,000+? ), they’re going down fast!

interesting CTS, i live in Perris and work in Riverside. Smoke and ashes here too.

Luca, very good points. If Japan opened their car market to ‘imports’ it would help to even things up. What’s up with Japan’s xenophobic attitude?

Doubt that opening Japan market would do much for domestic. The Japanese mentality of Japanese (and Korean for that matter) is more inward thinking and patriotic. Domestic would see limited success in an already small market. Even Toyota itself is not that adventurous, judging from the fact that they never had Lexus there until early this year.

Also, there is China next door, a market with much more potential and much more level playfield between European, American and Japanese automakers. Japanese is not always the perennial favorite because history has its way to influence consumer behavior, especially in China regarding the Japanese occupation.

Edit, I meant the mentality of Japanese (and Korean for that matter) is more inward thinking and patriotic.

There is no such thing as Japanese mentality of Korean for sure.

Has anyone done the math on what Toyota says is their goal—namely, selling 10.4 million cars by 2009? This year, they’re going to sell about 7 million, and 2009 in only a year away (or two, depending on how you count). To go from 7.0 to 10.4 million is a nearly 50% increase. Good luck with that, Toyota! I don’t care if all of their current quality woes were to suddenly vanish, nobody can increase sales 50% in one year, in today’s market. I think that’s called “wishful thinking”.

As for the point of this article, as the Aussies would say: “Good on ya!” GM!

Sorry guys, LLN was not letting me log on for the past day or two. I am back now so let me get straight to calling out this bull****:

1115 – Look at this article: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2007/gb20070928_752031.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives
Unless you are completely brain dead, that should show you that Toyota is NOT a smaller company than GM. You are STILL passing Toyota off as a little guy, get out of the 70s!! And those are FACTS my friend, it shows that Toyota is the biggest automaker by revenue, profits, market capitalization, and is almost #1 in sales.

cardesigner – how are Corsas bought up by grannies? First Buicks and Cadillacs are bought by Florida retirees and now the polar opposite of large American sedans — small Euro hatchbacks — are supposedly for grannies? Just pick one and go with it. How you ever even been to Europe? Hatchbacks are bought by everyone from teens to adults to single moms to parents and even small families.

SwerveEarly – you are an idiot. Its not funny to be sarcastic about that fire. People have died in it — if it was just the houses that burned I wouldn’t be offended but people perished in that fire so keep the lame jokes out of that one.

GMCsyclone, visit Japan sometime and you will see why they don’t buy U.S. cars. Their roads are entirely too small to have U.S. sized cars driving all over. Also, due to said small roads, nice cars don’t last nice too long. Scratches and scrapes are unavoidable.

Of course there are many other reasons, like Japan’s reluctance to let their favorable balance of trade (exporting so much more than they import) be ruined, which you can’t really blame them for unless you’re American and on the wrong end of that balance of trade. Also Japan has been in an economic slow and gradual economic depression for several decades now, so of course they are going to want to support their own economy in hopes of boosting it.

So yeah, Japanese have plenty of reasons not to buy American cars, and just about all of them are good from their perspective.

Cyclone of Red – yes, Japanese have at least a minimal sense of nationalism (which is really all you need – just a tid bit) that they are concerned with the economy and well being of their country. And the crazy thing is that America built modern-day Japan. We laid the foundation for democracy and freedom and a powerful economy in that country as well as in South Korea.

GM is one of the “big 3″
I never passed them off as a “small guy” they have grown bigger and made more money than GM due to their product being better and more reliable than GM in the 80’s 90’s and NOW

It doesn’t matter if they are just as big they are on top or not because their product is more reliable than the American products. You can quote Business Week, Robb Report, Us Weekly or Martha Stewart living. It doesn’t make a difference
Engine sludge and your little BS arguments and CR (when you choose to believe them) are not affecting Toyota’s resale reliablity or sales They outsell and make more money apparently. Cant wait to hear your yen exchange excuse
The only thing I will say is that they best release that Corolla bc Honda and even Hyundai are killing the small car market now. The American car companies dont even matter at this point

Well here is my yen exchange argument: QUOTE FROM ARTICLE – “A recent study also revealed that GM made $2,123 less per vehicle than Toyota did in 2006.” That my friend is called a competitive advantage. Not making it up.

Engine sludge is just one of MANY arguments, you are the one who picks and chooses. In addition, you complete IGNORE all my sources because they don’t support your claim. What is up with that? For your info, Toyota’s resales are down (more fleet sales – I’ll prove that if you’d like), Toyota’s reliability is down as CR and CNN said as well as Toyota themselves ADMITTING that they were having problems and also their sales are down (tilt your head up and read the name of the article on which you are commenting on). You seem to be living in your own little world and completely ignoring everything. Sure, Asia is killing the small car market. I’ll give you that. GM has yet to challenge them in that segment (well the Astra is a great start) but I am confident that they will make better and better small cars in the future now that they understand how important that segment is.

Lastly, I wasn’t talking about you trying to pass off GM as small. I was referring to you saying something along the lines of “GM is bigger than Toyota so why is this news ? Toyota earns more money than GM though Sounds about right
GM still sucks”. The point is that Toyota is the one who is bigger than GM and I the link above proves that to you. Here it is again:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2007/gb20070928_752031.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives

COMMADORE- i live in europe u idiot.the UK to be exact. the corsa is a granny car jus like the rest of the range of GM european cars. these are bought by people who have no interest in cars. opel/vauxhall has a ****ty reputation in europe. so i wud kno.
my auntie has a corsa. the must depressing humdrum shoddly built car i’ve ever been in. It makes some french car’s seem tough.

actually autonut i realy like the matrix/vibes, i was thinking about a small wagen to replace my small truck, i can easily make that change i really dont haul anything because taking the tenneau cover is kind of a pain in the butt. the only limiting factor would be i love heading into the wilderness to go mountain biking and camping and i wouldnt be able to access mabey 10% of the places i like to go.
i think the matrix/vibe plant is up in la county somewhere, but theese are a really nice venture between toyota and g.m.

It’s Commodore

And the Astra and Corsa are both very respected cars there. They at least have style, so your “bought by people who have no interest in cars” like belong to the Japanese.

answer to cardesigner5: i live in Europe and Corsa is a very good car, the best or one of the best of its segment; in fact is a top seller together with Fiat Grande Punto and old (but high valueforprice) Ford Fiesta, Peugeot 307 and Renault Clio. Opel Corsa is by far the favourite small car for young people all over Europe. No jap cars is in the list.. wonder why? expensive, ugly, uneconomic cars aren’t competitive…. by the way TOYota Yaris is the small car in Italy for “old ladies”, Opel Corsa, which is very sporty, is the chosen one by youngest.

I feel like I should copy and paste my last post.

Whether GM is bigger isn’t relevant bc Toyota was not as big as GM. Making a reliable product is what helped the Japanese grow. GM is and has been lagging behind the Japanese for about 20 years now. I just wont trust GM overnight like ignorant American who want GM to succeed do.

Once again your engine sludge articles are bs proper maintenance can take care of things like that. You are reaching to find any dirt on Toyota or Honda. You dwell on one( this) years recalls when GM have been recalling the hell out of their cars up to 2006.

Toyota and Honda on their worst day (or year) is better that GM on its best at this point. GM is trying to import cars from Europe and Australia but are Holden’s and Opel’s really that reliable >?

The need better R & D, better money management (so you don’t whine about the yen) and they need their own NEW designs. When GM and the other domestics get with it then they can be mentioned in the same sentence with Japanese cars.

SwerveEarly: funny!
It took me two hours to get to work monday; the pigs closed off all the highways with their “wind advisories.” My exurb is surrounded by flaming towns.

RicardoHead: “Toyota … should be thanked, because as a result GM is figuring out that they need to put some form of fun in their cars to move them, so now if I need a fun, highly reliable, cheap-to-operate whip I actually have a choice. In the unlikely event that Ford would catch a clue, then I could have more of a choice.”

straight truth

CTS: fires on both sides of Temecula, and S.D. refugees running around like decapitated chickens.

autonut: Corollas and Vibes are made at NUMMI, a joint venture, not a Toyota plant

GMCsyclone: I did not like being a gaijin, but …

sharpie: the chinese refere to the Japanese as “Brown Dwarfs.” lots of animosity between those nations

Cyclone: most of your 22 Oct 11:54p post is on point, but there are some kids there that love Suburbans and the last-generation caprice classic

trioleonefive: “It doesn’t matter if they are just as big they are on top or not because their product is more reliable than the American products.” What? Your reasoning is more f—d than your grammar.

“Engine sludge and your little BS arguments and CR (when you choose to believe them) are not affecting Toyota’s resale reliablity or sales.”
Engine sludge doesn’t affect reliability? You’re that damn dumb? Your one valid point is that the Corolla is getting its ass kicked.