Who is No. 1?
A couple of weeks ago I saw the press release of Toyota global sales posted as 9.37 million units for 2007, up 6 percent over the previous year.
With this release, industry insiders began murmuring about how those figures play against the previous release sales target figure from General Motors, the perennial global leader now for decades. Their initial target was 9.3 million.
The good news is, as of this morning, GM hit their target and bested it by a few units. Total global GM sales figures list 9.369 million units sold in 2007.
So it looks like they may have to hand over their crown to Toyota, who has been gaining market share on U.S. soil and everywhere else (except in Japan surprisingly where sales dropped 4 percent in 2007).
But not so fast.
The figures I am reading on the Toyota official website seem to be rounding their numbers to the next highest tens of thousand units. And, by these same figures layed out in a spreadsheet format, I add up the final worldwide sales numbers for 2007 to be only 9.36 million. Seems they may have carried an extra “one” that is not listed on the document.
What does all of this mean?
One thing is for sure, we can expect a lot of back and forth on this issue as the final results are sorted out.
I wish them both the best of luck. Maybe it will come down to Rick Wagoner and Katsuaki Watanabe in a caged winner-take-all ultimate fighting match at the next major international auto show.
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