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Toyota No. 1 In Sales As GM Loses Ground

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The New York Times

Published: January 22, 2009

DETROIT - For the first time since the Great Depression, General Motors cannot call itself the world's largest automaker. Its sales fell behind Toyota in 2008, a year when GM celebrated its 100th anniversary and narrowly avoided a bankruptcy filing amid a significant downturn in the economy.

GM said Wednesday that it sold 8.35 million vehicles in 2008, about 620,000 fewer than Toyota's 8.97 million. GM's sales were down 11 percent from 2007, and Toyota's declined 4 percent.

GM had been the largest carmaker since 1931, two years before Toyota began making cars in Japan. Toyota had been closing in on GM for years, its sales surged around the world as GM's global expansion was tempered by decades of falling market share in the United States. The two had traded places from one quarter to the next in recent years, and GM had been widely expected to slip to second place in 2007 but held off Toyota by about 3,000 vehicles.

Both companies struggled in 2008 as global sales for the industry fell by 3.5 million vehicles. Toyota said it expected to report its first operating loss in its history for the year ending March 31.

Demand fell the most in North American and Europe, regions where GM is a larger player. As a result, executives from the Detroit company, which has lost money every year since 2004, warned that it could run out of cash without billions in loans from the U.S. government.

GM's global sales fell 26 percent in the fourth quarter, and the company received a $4 billion loan in December. It is expecting an additional $5.4 billion installment any day.

"Our goal is to fight for every profitable sale," Michael C. DiGiovanni, GM's executive director of global market and industry analysis, said Wednesday.

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