General Motors Corp. said Wednesday it sold 9,369,524 vehicles worldwide last year, up 3 percent from 2006 and making the global sales race with Toyota Motor Corp. too close to call.
Earlier this month, Toyota reported global sales of 9.37 million vehicles, but the Japanese automaker did not release a number down to the last vehicle sold.
“Great products and value drive a volatile market and put the consumer in the driver’s seat,” said Toyota Motor Sales President Jim Lentz. “Toyota, Lexus and Scion deliver on both.”
Detroit-based GM has held the title of world’s largest automaker for 76 years, but Toyota’s strong U.S. growth and GM’s U.S. sales decline helped Toyota move closer to the top spot in recent years.
“We set a record in China with more than a million vehicles sold. We nearly doubled our sales in Russia to an all-time record of more than 258,000 vehicles delivered. And we set a record in Brazil with nearly a half-million vehicles sold,” said John Middlebrook, GM vice president for Global Sales, Service and Marketing Operations. “This is the kind of emerging market growth that fuels our global performance. Customers are responding to our fuel-efficient and dynamically-designed product lineup around the world.”
The 2007 tally was the second-best global sales total in the GM’s 100-year history and marked the third consecutive and fourth time ever that GM sold more than 9 million vehicles in a calendar year.
