On 2007, GM reported 9,349,818 sales, Toyota reported 8,534,690. That’s supposed to be sales to customer btw, not alleged sales onto already overcrowded dealer lots (a goosing of numbers for which Ford is still notorious.) The “sales” immediately came under suspicion, because GM counted 100% sales of companies they only had a minority interest in.

Toyota pointed to real production numbers. Said Toyota had produced 9,497,754 units in the same period, while GM had only produced 9,349,818. And GM “sold” all they produced? (Or maybe didn’t even produce.) “Sumimasen, our cars move faster off the lots than yours,” Toyota wanted to say, but Japanese school of good manners kept them from doing that, “are you frikken kidding us?”

Anyway, that cheating chapter is closed. GM is assured of its own Pearl Harbour of 2008, and this time, nobody can say they didn’t see it coming.

Speaking of Hyundai, they have a long ways to go. They totalled 2,617,725 units in 2007.

Then again, Batista predicted that Fidel Castro’s reign would last one year, no longer. So what do I know?

GM is no longer a financial services company, since GMAC is gone (in more ways than one). It doesn’t ever have to sell another car.

GM survives now as a homeless former car company. Its revenue stream now comes excusively from taxpayers. Its real business is professional welfare queen.

Europe, Japan, and the USA are chockablock full with cars. Western Europe and Japan have a demographics problem: Since 1970, birthrate down by half, means the market is getting smaller and smaller. The hope are China, Russia, India, in that order.