Alright so let’s keep these ‘round the world’ updates as relevant to world news as possible: After Libya, I decided to go to troubled Yemen to give you an idea of what cars the Yemeni consumer prefers.

Alright, so we’ve gone to South America ( Argentina, Brazil), Africa ( Libya) and Asia ( North Korea). It’s now time to visit Europe, and why not start with Spain, a perilous but fascinating place at the moment.

If you can’t wait for the next update and want to know all about car sales in 154 countries around the planet, simply go here. Es mi blog y es impresionante, sí señor!

After telling you all about the best selling cars in Argentina and Libya, I will proudly continue to surprise you, and come back to South America to talk to you about Brazil. Because something pretty exceptional happened last month in Brazil. No wait. A once in a decade event. No less.

Now here is an interesting tidbit from Volkswagen’s press conference of today. Remember when three weeks ago J.D. Power announced that 72 million light-vehicles were sold worldwide in 2010, a number never seen before? Volkswagen has a different picture.

Everybody, please say hi to Matt Gasnier, our newest TTAC contributor. Matt has a strange car fetish: He counts them. Out of Sydney, Australia, Matt runs a blog named Best Selling Cars. If your want to know what cars sell best in Austria to Zimbabwe, Best Selling Cars is the go to site. What cars do Afghanistan and Sudan have in common? The Hilux. Which car is most popular in Sweden? It’s not a Swedish car. Matt will grace TTAC regularly from now on. He wanted to know where he should start. My answer: “Wherever.”

Said Matt: “Why don’t I start with A.” – ED

Most of the car world is either still recovering from the GFC gloom or is suffering the hangover of a couple of artificially boosted years. Only a few countries are at their highest levels ever. Among them China and Brazil (doh!) but little do people know that Argentina also belongs to this super-exclusive club.

While we were focused on the U.S. market in 2010 and were happy that it awoke from the dead and went above 10 million, the world quietly left carmageddon behind itself and set a new record: 72 million light-vehicles were sold worldwide in 2010, a number never seen before, says J.D. Power. For this year, the Westlake Village research group expects another world record. However, most of this record was not and will not be produced where most of our readership lives.

Car sales in India powered ahead in January. India added 184,332 passenger cars to its roads, up 26.3 percent. According to the Hindustan Times, this was “the highest ever in a month eclipsing the previous record set only three months ago.” Allow me to use this opportunity for a small lecture on the use and abuse of auto industry statistics, in Asia, and around the world.

A study by Booz & Co, that calls itself “one of the leading management consultancies in the world,” predicts that India will be the world’s 4th largest car market by 2015 and will surpass the European Nations by 2015. I don’t doubt that India is a very important market with great growth potential. But Booz & Co must have consumed too much of its namesake.

Now that most of the large car companies have supplied their numbers, TTAC has compiled its annual table of the world’s largest automakers. In doing so, we have attempted to come as close as possible to the methodology used in the official OICA list, which will be published some time this summer. Here is the 2009 version as a reference. And here are TTAC’s Top Ten of 2010:

If you want to get ahead in the car business, this is required reading. If you just like cars and don’t give a hoot about who makes them where and why, then you may skip this.

From RenCen to Wolfsburg, all eyes are on China. Ok, so this year China will build and buy 18 million cars or thereabouts. But what about next year? Carmakers in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. are dependent on the Chinese growth machine. So what will it be? Boom or bust?

You have heard the whole year about the exploding Chinese car market. Surprise: Production growth in the U.S. appears to be stronger than China. In a few days or weeks, we will have the 2010 sales numbers. In this economy, what’s more important than spending money is making money, and that means jobs. For that, we have to look at the motor vehicle production numbers by country. For those, we will have to wait many months until OICA gets around to tabulating them. Let’s make a best guess estimate for who’s on top and by how much.

So who will be the world’s largest automaker this year? Like it or not, this is decided by numbers of units produced, size doesn’t matter. Some time in summer 2011, OICA will publish the official worldwide manufacturer ranking. Let’s try to figure out the top three. Number 3 is easy:

Unless a major disaster happens, (such as a falling sky, or a combined blood, fish, frog, and snake rain) Ford will retake the #2 slot from Toyota this year in the U.S. The DetN came to this conclusion after studying the year to date market share of both. In his monthly sales call, Ford’s analyst George Pipas said that Ford has increased its domestic sales at nearly twice the market’s growth rate. Ford’s market share stands at 16.4 percent at the moment, up from 15.3 percent last year. And Toyota?

Today, Bloomberg delights its readers with the news that “General Motors Co.’s passenger-car venture in China sold its millionth unit this year, becoming the first carmaker to reach that sales level in the world’s largest auto market.” Spinmeistery at maximum revolutions.

Just a few days ago, the same Bloomberg had this story:

OICA, the venerable “Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d’Automobiles,” better known as the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, finally got around to finishing their 2009 World Ranking of Manufacturers by motor vehicle production. This list has very little surprises for the TTAC B&B who pinned our World’s Top Ten Automakers 2009 to the wall. Yet, there are some. Let’s see …

Which? is kind of the UK version of Consumer Reports. They publish a bunch of magazines. If you want a computer, you get the latest edition of Which? Computing, if you need a vacation, you leaf through Which? Holiday, and for a car, you get – you guessed it – Which? Car. You will receive quite a shock if you do.

Prepare yourself for an increasing number of „good news“ along the following lines:

„October U.S. auto sales should be down about 6 percent from a year ago, marking the first single-digit monthly decline since May 2008, industry forecasting firm J.D. Power and Associates said on Friday.” Glad tidings, brought to you by Reuters.

Times must be really bad when single digit declines are feted as an improvement.

In reality, things stay as bad as they have been all year. In September 2008, the bottom fell out of the light vehicle market. From now on out, monthly sales will be compared to hell.