Products like the new Golf GTI helped VW topple Toyota as the globe's biggest automaker.
It didn’t take much to topple the king-of-the-hill, apparently.
It was less than a year ago that Toyota Motor Co. finally achieved its long-held goal of becoming the world’s largest auto manufacturer, pushing aside the troubled General Motors, which had held that title for three quarters of a century. But now, facing some serious problems of its own, Toyota has surprisingly slid back to the number two slot.
And the new world dominator? Volkswagen AG, which has fared surprisingly well, in most global markets, despite the nearly pandemic economic crisis. For the first nine months of the year, VW produced 4.4 million cars, trucks and crossovers, compared to just 4.0 million for Toyota.
Of course, there’s still a full quarter to go, and things are starting to look better for the Japanese giant, which had to repeatedly curtail production during the worst of the downturn. Toyota has begun to speed up its assembly lines, once again, notably both at home and in the American market, where it repeatedly posted double-digit sales declines during the first half of 2009.
But it’s still not full speed ahead, officials concede. During a visit to Detroit, last week, Toyota Division boss Bob Carter acknowledged that there are still no plans to start up a new plant in Tupelo, Mississippi. That facility – which on its own could sharply narrow the gap between Toyota and VW – was originally supposed to produce crossovers, then was briefly seen as a U.S. production site for the Prius hybrid. The factory shell is complete but there is no tooling and, for the moment, no decision on what it may eventually assemble.
Volkswagen, on the other hand, is rapidly expanding its marketing and growing in virtually all of its key markets, from Europe to China. It’s still struggling in the United States, but is preparing to open a new factory, in Chattanooga, that it’s counting on to help more than double American sales, to 800,000 annually.
“The American market is crucial for us and Volkswagen is ready to make a difference in the market,” Dr. Joachim Heizmann, the board member for VWAG overseeing production, told TheDetroitBureau.com during an interview, last month.
But another official of the company warned that despite gaining 1.8 points of world market share, this last year – boosting the total to around 12% — there very well could be a running battle, in the next few years, between Volkswagen and Toyota. “We have a clear goal to become number one in the world,” said Christian Klingler, the board member in charge of sales and marketing, but that might not be locked down until 2018, he added, when the current 10-year U.S. campaign is expected to wrap up.
Of course, Toyota officials may have something to say about that. Over the years, senior Japanese officials have been reluctant to say they wanted the number one slot. Publicly, at least. But well-placed insiders acknowledge that has been a driving goal for more than a decade. The maker expects to regain momentum in the American market, this next year, said Toyota division’s Carter. And it is looking to make up for a slow, late start in the critical Chinese market, now the world’s largest on the passenger car side of the sales charts.
Germany and Japan both battling it out for world domination. As Yogi Berra might say, the has the ring of “déjà vu all over again.”