Toyota retains top spot as largest seller of cars, trucks in the world

January 27, 2016: Toyota retained its position as the world’s top-selling automaker for the fourth year in a row. The company announced on Wednesday that together with its subsdiaries Daihatsu and Hino, it had sold 10.15 million cars and trucks in 2015.

The Japanese automaker had been overtaken in the first half of 2015 by Volkswagen, but the German carmaker saw a sharp fall in sales following the revelation that it had fitted 11 million vehicles with devices meant to cheat pollution tests.

The US government plans to sue Volkswagen, which got embroiled in the crisis in the second-half of 2015. The German giant sold 9.9 million vehicles in 2015, and was closely followed by General Motors (9.8 million).

GM had traditionally been the top-selling carmaker in the world, but in 2008 it was overtaken by Toyota. However, after the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan in 2011, Toyota lost its pole position to GM.

A year later it recovered the top spot and has been maintaining it all these years. With the economic slowdown in China and even other emerging markets such as Thailand and Indonesia, Toyota’s grow has decelerated. In India, it has not been able to dent the stranglehold of its Japanese rival Suzuki, which controls nearly half the market.

Source : BS Motoring