Automaker
US auto market weak – Toyota overtakes GM
With around 2.3 million cars sold in 2021, Toyota conquered the market leadership in the USA. Photo: Rick Bowmer / AP / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
General Motors is losing its position as the top-selling supplier in the USA. Japanese competitor Toyota overtakes the automaker.
Persistent chip shortages and problems in supply chains slowed US auto sales towards the end of the year.
The largest US manufacturer General Motors (GM) suffered a particularly severe slump and for the first time in 90 years lost its position as the top-selling provider in its home market. With around 2.3 million cars sold in the full year of 2021, the Japanese industry giant Toyota sold around 114,000 more new cars to US customers than GM, thus gaining market leadership.
According to its own information, GM had to cope with a sales decline of 43 percent in the final quarter. Overall, the group sold around 2.2 million cars in the USA, 13 percent fewer than in the previous year. Toyota coped with the chip crisis much better and increased its US sales by about ten percent. According to data from the US trade magazine “Automotive News”, it is the first time since 1931 that another manufacturer has sold more cars in the US than GM in a calendar year.
Of the German manufacturers, only BMW has presented US results for the fourth quarter and the full year so far. The Munich-based company increased sales of its core brand by almost 21 percent to 336,644 new cars. In the last three months of the year, however, there was a nearly six percent drop in sales. The BMW subsidiary Mini posted a sales increase of 6.4 percent last year – despite a minus of eight percent in the last quarter.