Toyota Is Number One On Car Sales
TOKYO - Toyota remained as the first car-maker in terms of sales with 8.42 million vehicles sold worldwide in 2010, even with the crisis suffered due to the recalls that affected the company earlier this year.
Hopefully Forecast
The company said that its 2010 sales increased 8% compared to 2009, which narrowly beat to General Motors (GM), which sold 8.39 million cars.
At the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010, Toyota had to convene to monitoring almost nine million cars in the world due to various technical problems, particularly in the accelerator pedals that could crash and the brake system that reacted with delay, one of the worst crises in its history.
The 2010 sales figures from Toyota and General Motors showed the quick recovery of the world market after two years of the worst crisis in the history of the industry, in which two of Detroit's Big Three, GM, Ford and Chrysler, had to resort to the protection of bankruptcy laws to survive.
In the U.S., sales of new cars went up in 2010 for the first time since the start of the recession, with a total of 11.6 million, but they are still far from where they were just three years ago.
The total number of vehicles sold was a 11% increase compared to 2009, due in part to boost buyers in December, who took home 1.14 million cars, an increase of 11% compared to the figures for the same month of 2009.
GM, Ford and Toyota, predicted that sales will reach between 12.5 and 13 million units, but it could take years to return to sales of 17 million vehicles, the historic peak, which was reported in the middle of the previous decade.
Toyota leads the list since 2008, when they took the number one spot to GM, which occupied it for over 70 years.
The firm, based in Nagoya, Japan, said that the first place worldwide in terms of sales is not "important. "
"Our goal is to be number one for the customer, in terms of service and customer satisfaction" said a spokesman, Paul Nolasco.
Toyota, with all their brands included expects sales of 8.61 million vehicles in 2011, up 2% in one year.