Wait what? Toyota tops GM in 2007?

No, we’re not bipolar. GM topped Toyota… as of yesterday. Now comes word from Automotive News that Toyota topped GM for 2007. Deja vu? If so, you have a good memory, yes this did happen for 2006 sales as well. It appears for the second year running, GM was widely reported to have beaten Toyota in global annual sales, and yet again once you strip out the Wuling joint venture sales, of which GM has a 34% stake, Toyota takes the top spot. 

Last year, GM was stripped of over 400,000 Wuling sales reducing their total to 8.68 million versus Toyota’s 8.81 million sales. This year GM lost over 500,000 sales from their total. Since GM was only ahead of Toyota by 3,000 units, there’s no question who wins at that point. 

Automotive News’ practice is to only include subsidiary sales for which the company in question owns more than 50%. As such Ford does not get credit for Mazda’s sales as they only own 33.4% of Mazda.

Far be it for us to challenge the accepted convention, but we’d like to see a sales breakdown where you get partial credit. Yes, what worked in math class should work here. If you own 51% of a company, you should get credit for 51% of their sales. If you own 99%, you get 99%. If you own 49.9%, if you own 33.4%… well you get the idea.

What do you guys make of the sales race? What about the method by which it’s calculated? We’d like to here your ideas, so don’t be afraid to give us a piece of your mind in the comments below.

Now about the electoral college… oh nevermind.

 

Source: Automotive News

[tags]Cars, Car, Auto, Automobile, Vehicles, Technology, Auto News, News, Automotive, Toyota, GM[/tags]

Chris Chin

Chris Chin is the Editor-In-Chief of egmCarTech and is a regular contributor to Automobile Magazine.

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