Toyota is mortgaging their quality and built up faith of consumer reports robots to get there. But atleast they can say they are number one.

Chickens did not hatch yet, but if numbers in this article are accurate, Toyota is #1 in sales. Despite GM success in China, statistically they can not claim it: they do NOT own 51% of Chinese development factories and sales operations. Those 1,000,000 Buicks are counted as products of independent Chinese subsidiary. Furthermore, GM can not legally take money out of China (except the amount they originally invested).

Who cares… I love whichever one makes my customers happy.

I suppose the increase in the U.S. will be led by the bland, appliance-like “new” Corolla. Even though I seriously dislike this car, I have to admit that I see examples of the current version of this car all over the road disfiguring the automotive landscape. I guess most of the population really do view their vehicles as appliances after all.

I’m still taking the Cowboys by 3 over the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Wait…wrong thread!

Toyota surpassed GM in quarterly sales in like the second or third quarter of 07, but GM reclaimed the #1 “title” the following quarter. What I foresee is GM and Toyota going back and forth like this for years to come. Toyota is on a quest to increase production and to increase total output. GM is actually cutting back on production so Toyota will exceed GM in annual production and sales soon. However just as GM learned decades ago, and they are now just recovering from was the decrease in quality due to increase in production, a problem that we are just starting to see with Toyota. In the last two years their re-calls have reached #’s never seen before with Toyota, I still think that Toyota offers some quality vehicles but if they continue to keep this up, we’ll be seeing a lot more recalls by Toyota.

Haha Johnycanuk! LMAO! However I beg to differ. The Patriots are going all the way!!!

I think there getting a little to big for there britches.

Great strategy by Toyota. Pump out ****tier cars, be #1 for a year or two, then hand the title back over to GM for another few decades as they realize Toyota has taken over the **** Quality Market.

This is ALL Toyoda cars about – being the one to beat America in car sales. Well, I have no doubt that they will succeed, but clearly it is at the expense of quality so I am willing to bet that as early as 2010, GM will have its top dog title back..not that it really matters. I could care less if GM sold less than Nanjing or whatever if they keep churning out good **** like the CTS. Toyoda on the other hand, just cannot stop obsessing over being the #1 appliance maker

Patriots! The new stadium is awesome by the way

My money on Patriots as well.
As far as Toyota being leader in sales, everyone missed one critical point: Toyota makes money on every car/truck it sells. Quality gaffes cost them a lot of money after they made money on the sale. GM, Ford & Chrysler sell a lot of vehicles and loose money on every one they sell! If they would not have piles of cash and good will from last century of operation they all would join Edsel, Oldsmobile and Plymouth. The difference between them and Toyota is that GM (& co) are trying to survive and not go bankrupt, while Toyota is being profitable and getting richer by each sale. Perhaps Toyota will become as screwed up as domestic trio, but so far that did NOT happen.

autonut is right. It doesn’t matter if your business is 10% than your competitors as long as you’re making money and they don’t. The bottom line of any kind of work has always been how much individual net profit you gained at the end of the year. You can be a CEO of some global company but if you’re not making as much as that small shop business owner, you’re still the loser. Sales figures are for model popularity survey only, not an indicator of how well a company is doing.

Toyota may be a good car company with good products, but I would never root for the visiting team. I’m an American and my hope is always that our guys eventually will get it right. Go GM.

I’ll always be rooting for GM. They’ve really done a great job turning the company around since 2003-2004. It’s really quite amusing to see how Toyota has got it so instilled in american’s heads that they’re green and good quality so that now when they start blundering with quality issues, they’ve got that to rest on. This push for sales in america has affected the quality of their product. I’m rooting for GM in this bout’. Ford and Chrysler…heh…well they dug their own graves.

Have we all become mindless, souless robots? I ahve no promlem with Toyota being number 1 IF they had a range of brilliant cars full of innovation, hot looks and true progression..but..well you know what the real situation is. Then again, im not surprised as most people are more interested in what Paris Hilton is doing than great art…

vlphil – you are absolutely right. And it isn’t about patriotism like 1115 would say. If Toy made the best products, I would buy them. And for a while, European were my only choice (Japanese were second, but I just preferred Euro). The domestics had no shot in hell of getting my business for some time, but I still wished that they would make a turn around, that they would make a car that I would buy. I would NEVER buy a ****ty car just out of patriotism, but I always wanted GM and the rest to make a comeback. On the other hand, you have people in the US that hate GM with a passion. They want them to go bankrupt and what not… they are rooting for our companies to fail and for us to be beaten by someone else. I just don’t get that.

Patriotism if great, but chauvinism or nationalism are root of evil. I like Japanese manufacturers because their vehicles for US are made in US. “Domestics” are made in Mexico and Canada. Those of Canadian pedigree are of better quality.
The reason “home team” is getting better is because of global competition. If we would exercise protectionist laws like China we would never surpassed quality of 60s (it was not actually bad for the time being), but you cant compare the quality of today versus then and it is due to pressure from Japanese competition.

Once again someone does not understand why the Japanese build the North America spec models here instead of there. It has nothing to do with wanting to put Americans to work. It is because it saves them money and gives them more profit. Toyota does not produce a Camry in Kentucky then ship it over to Japan to sell. People think that foriegn manufactures are doing the U.S. some kind of personal favor by having factories here. I personally hope that one day my children can pick from a company to work for that is’nt just a foriegn company. This is where America is headed kids. The only countries now that have no large corporations of there own and rely on the corp’s of other countries,are mostly third world. Every American dollar spent on the thousands of Chinese made products go straight to a Communist goverment.
There is nothing wrong with owning a Toyota, a Honda, whatever as long as you quit wrapping the flag around them. You can wrap it as tight as you want, they are and never will be an American company. So GM builds some cars in Mexico, big deal, same reason Toyota/Honda build cars in the U.S., it’s cheaper. It’s truly scary to read some of the post on this site from young people such as lamoz and tripleretard.