Every manufacturer crows about plans for growth. But they can’t all be right, can they?
So Toyota has overtaken General Motors as the world’s biggest car maker. In the first quarter of 2007, the Japanese giant produced 2.35 million vehicles, compared with GM’s 2.26 million in the same period. Big deal. Why? Well, this has been predicted for years. The Toyota juggernaut has rolled on arrow-straight and nobody doubted that they would, one day, overtake GM. That day was today.
What interests me is where all this will end. Car company suits love to crow about growth plans. Audi wants to jump from 900,000 today to 1.5 million by 2015. Most rival car companies make similarly ambitious claims. In fact, if you totted up every corporate boast, you’d believe that the global car market is about to double in size by next decade. It won’t and that is why we must take sales predictions with handfuls of salt.
Don’t count GM down and out quite yet, either. It is number one in the fast-growing Chinese car market and its sales actually jumped more than 20 percent in the Asia/Pacific region this year. Business in Latin America, Africa and Middle East has leaped by 17 percent, and by 6 percent in Europe. It’s just a shame that its market share in the US has slumped so heavily.
The industry map is changing rapidly and there are going to be plenty more winners and losers in the coming years. I’d wager that we’ll see more old names fall by the wayside. But which will be the next brand to die?