#ranking

With only two more weeks to go in the calendar year, TTAC names GM the world’s largest automaker of 2011, followed by Volkswagen and Toyota.

Pummeled by a catastrophic tsunami in March, followed by a massive flood in Thailand, Toyota’s production and sales numbers will take a serious hit in the calendar year 2011. Global production of Toyota and Lexus vehicles is forecasted to be “at least 6.9 million units, as compared with 7.7 million units last calendar year,” Toyota spokesman Dion Corbett told TTAC. Global sales for the calendar year 2011 are forecasted to be “at least 7 million units, as compared with 7.7 million units last calendar year.” Corbett confirmed that this number is without Daihatsu and Hino. Projections for these units are not available. Based on October data, we add another 900,000 for Daihatsu and Hino, which should bring the Toyota total into the neighborhood of 7.8 million units.

In June, we made a projection of who will be where on the podium of the world’s largest automakers by the end of 2011. Now that half year results of most majors are in, we can have another look. Suddenly, the race gets tighter, and it could remain interesting till the end.
First, let’s see where we stand at halftime.

After Hyundai delivered a record profit of $4.7 billion yesterday, smaller sibling Kia announced its results today. The Kia’s 2010 net profits rose 55 percent to approximately $2 billion. Some analysts expected more, but the fourth quarter had only a rise of 4.6 percent.

Kia adds another 2,131,531 units to the combined Hyundai/Kia grand total, which now (according to our unofficial TTAC calculations) stands at 5,744,018 units. Where does that leave Ford?

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.