Skip to footer

Toyota regains top spot as world's largest automaker from Volkswagen

Volkswagen has now lost the crown to perennial leader Toyota, which looks set to remain the world’s largest automaker by sales—and likely profits, too—in 2015. 

|
Rick Bowmer/AP/File
Toyota remained 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. Toyota Motor Corp.'s global sales for the first three quarters totaled 7.498 million vehicles, down 1.5 percent from the same period the previous year, according to numbers released Monday, Oct. 26, 2015.

After briefly leading the industry in global vehicle sales this summer, Volkswagen has now lost the crown to perennial leader Toyota which looks set to remain the world’s largest automaker by sales—and likely profits, too—in 2015. Toyota said it sold 7.49 million vehicles through September, while for the same period VW reported only 7.43 million sales. Incidentally, both figures are down 1.5 percent on the automakers’ respective results from one year ago.

Unfortunately for VW, the automaker’s emissions cheating scandal has forced it to suspend sales of several key vehicles. According to Bloomberg, these latest results include less than two weeks of VW’s stop-sale order of its diesel models affected by the scandal, so we’re likely to see the German automaker’s results impacted more harshly in the fourth quarter. It may even lead to General Motors Company [NYSE:GM], which sold 7.2 million vehicles through September, surpassing VW in global sales this year.

All three automakers face headwinds as we approach the end of the year. While an area of rapid growth for several years, demand for new cars in China has slowed and the trend is likely to stay that way for some time. To help spur sales, the government last month cut a purchase tax on small cars (those with engines smaller than 1.6 liters) from 10 percent to 5 percent. These models represent about 60 percent of new carsales in China.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Toyota regains top spot as world's largest automaker from Volkswagen
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2015/1026/Toyota-regains-top-spot-as-world-s-largest-automaker-from-Volkswagen
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe