Official: General Motors Became the World’s No. 1 Manufacturer
GM takes advantage of Toyota’s decrease and of Chevrolet’s excellent shape to reinstall after three years on the chair of the absolute leader of the global automotive industry.
Sales growth of General Motors car portfolio and the decrease of Toyota’s portfolio have made the auto industry leader to change again in 2011. Americans from GM became the first car manufacturer in the world after three years of a pause, the main driver of this growth being Chevrolet.
GM, VW Group, Toyota
In 2011, GM sales totaled 9,025,642 units worldwide, an increase of 7.6% over the previous year. On the other hand, Toyota has lost 518,000 units compared to 2010 due to the natural disaster that hit the east coast of Japan in March 2011, all vehicles sold by the Japanese manufacturer on all world markets reaching 7.9 million units. Moreover, Toyota finds itself constrained to fall on the third place, because Volkswagen Group – which has the stated aim of becoming the first manufacturer in the world by 2018 – climbed on the second place with 8.16 million cars (up to one million than last year).
The explanation of the return
General Motors owes much of this result to Chevrolet, which last year celebrated its centenary. Thus, more than half of cars sold by GM in the world have had the Chevrolet grille logo (4.71 million). Chevrolet increases by 11% over the previous year. One explanation could be related to the official launch of the Chevrolet brand in South Korea, which until now maintaining the old Daewoo brand has been preferred. The main markets for the American brand remained the U.S. (1.77 million cars, 13%), Brazil (632,000) and China (595,000). Chevrolet’s best-seller in 2011 is Cruze (670,000 units last year).
GM statistics show that most cars were sold in China (2.55 million, +8.3%). Europe counts with 19% of global sales of General Motors (1.73 million, +4.4%), the third place of the old continent being based on a slight increase in sales of Opel (1.21 million cars in 2011 versus 1.18 million in 2010).
