World's Largest Automakers 2013: No Change Seen By Year-End
TTAC continues its coverage of the race for World’s Largest Automaker. Last year, around this time, we did not do too badly with our guesstimate that Toyota would finish the year as GM as and Volkswagen as #3. Let’s see how we’ll do this year.
Crude forecast by TTAC
This year, our admittedly crude estimate says that nothing will change in the ranking. The distances between the contestants most likely will get narrower. (The full year estimate is what it is: A very crude estimate, but good enough to establish a likely ranking.)
Toyota published its April and YTD data today. From January through April, TMC made 3,349,614 units on a global basis. That’s down 4.3 percent, however it is down from a mad dash in early 2012 that tried (and succeeded) to recover from the effects of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In April 2012, production was up 50 percent. Our crude World’O’Meter says that Toyota might pierce the 10 million units this year, Akio Toyoda said three weeks ago that this is what he and TMC want to do.
Volkswagen’s deliveries were up 5.5 percent through April, its former breakneck pace is slowing due to the effects of the European contagion, but its trajectory remains steeper than that of GM.
No new global data are available from GM, we extrapolated from the Q1 numbers.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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If you can include a dollar amount of auto sales, that would be even better.
While interesting, this has less relevance than picking Hollywood's hottest celebrity, since there is no reward for being the #1, 2, or 3 mfr in the world. The Death Watches have more bearing on investors and consumers. At a minimum, people just want to know their car won't be an orphan. Nobody tells their neighbor they just bought a car from the #1 mfr.