HONG KONG: Toyota surpassed General Motors in worldwide vehicle sales during the first three months of this year, marking the end of one of the longest runs of dominance in all of global industry and another milestone in Americas long decline from unchallenged industrial pre-eminence.
Toyota announced Tuesday that its worldwide sales reached 2.35 million cars and trucks in the first quarter; GM had previously announced that its sales totaled 2.26 million vehicles in the first quarter.
GM swept past Ford in 1931 in the enormous U.S. market and in worldwide sales, and barely looked back for seven decades. But a combination of inattention to quality, poor labor relations, adverse regulatory decisions and a slowness to recognize the potential for small cars eroded GMs seemingly insurmountable lead starting in the mid-1960s.
Emerging from the ashes of Japans defeat in World War II partly thanks to U.S. assistance during the Korean War, Toyota established itself through the 1970s and 1980s as the industry standard for quality and reliability. It has since built a reputation for technological leadership as well, most notably with the Prius and other hybrid cars.
Toyota took the worldwide lead in the first quarter as it stepped up sales in every major market. GM continued to gain market share in China, but is struggling in the United States and Europe and has never been able to gain a firm foothold in the Japanese market.
GM and Toyota spokesmen were equally reluctant Tuesday to portray themselves as engaged in a global car race for leadership. GM has been trying to emphasize its future as an international automaker - three-fifths of its sales are now outside the United States - and not on the storied greatness of its past.
“Were focused on providing the best cars and trucks for our customers all around the world,” said John McDonald, a GM spokesman in Detroit. “Were not focused on a race.”
Toyota has been leery of the attention, and often the criticism, that frequently come with being the biggest in any industry. It has frequently been the main target of trade restrictions in the United States and Europe, and this has made the company cautious of being seen as too large or too aggressive.
“We look at the results as simply a reflection of how our products are viewed favorably around the world,” said Paul Nolasco, a company spokesman in Tokyo. “We dont just make them and push them out the door - we have a pull system and we build them when they are ordered.”
Industry analysts were bolder. “It is a historic moment” for Toyota, said Benjamin Asher of Automotive Resources Asia, which was acquired last year by J.D. Power Associates. “Everyone was expecting it to assume the number one position, the question was when.”
Yale Zhang, the director of greater-China vehicle forecasts for CSM Worldwide, an automotive consulting firm, said that while Toyota lags Volkswagen and GM in the fast-growing Chinese market now, it is on track to pull into the lead in 2013.
Toyota has lagged mainly because it has been slow to enter some segments of the market in China, as Chinese officials were wary of granting permission for Toyota to build factories in the 1990s given decades of Sino-Japanese rivalry. But Toyota is now expanding swiftly.
“Its pretty easy for Toyota in China given Toyotas brand image, the quality and the design of the cars,” Zhang said.
General Motors has ruled the auto industry for so long that industry statisticians scrambled to figure out the precise quarters in which it last trailed another automaker. Comparing automakers worldwide sales on anything less than an annual basis is a fairly recent phenomenon.
Ford opened its first plant outside North America in England in 1911, while GM expanded aggressively in the European market in the 1920s. But automakers had typically eschewed worldwide sales announcements until the last few years, announcing monthly and quarterly sales separately in each country instead.
This has changed as the Internet has improved communications and as automakers have begun forcing their far-flung operations to work closely together, instead of functioning as a series of separate fiefdoms.
Ford briefly overtook GM in American sales in July 1998, when a strike lasting nearly eight weeks at two GM parts factories in Flint, Michigan, triggered the shutdown of almost all of GMs assembly plants across North America. Ford also outpaced GM briefly in the autumn of 1970, when a 10-week national strike crippled GMs operations.
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