GM spent 70-odd years at the top.
I imagine that GM’s stock probably took a hit from this. The question is: Will this accelerate GM’s slide towards bankruptcy, or will it snap them out of it and allow them to reverse their fall?
GM’s stock ended up 10 cents, so it appears that the news didn’t have much of an effect. This has been expected for a while, incidentally. Toyota is still third in the US, behind GM and Ford, so don’t expect GM to be holding any fire sales soon. It’s probably worth mentioning that GM has been reducing sales to rental fleets, because they don’t make much money from them and they hurt resale values for the cars.
Toyota is number one because they deserve it.
Very little can be said besides that.
What is most surprising is that it took so long to beat out GM. GM has been building crap cars for my whole life.
GM’s corporate DNA has long been about being the biggest (and that means units sold). Not the most profitable, not the best, not the most popular, not most margin on parts, not the safest, not the coolest, nothing but purely about have the largest number of automobiles sold.
In China, GM is number one. But if you discount the motorized tin can ultra mini van that wouldn’t pass a safety test in Romania that they make about $1 per vehicle on, then no GM is not the number one producer in China. China is their global jewel, but man are they proud about the #1 spot in China. And that’s a pathetically low margin business.
Absolutely. Toyotas aren’t always the most exciting cars, but by hell are they reliable. I’m currently driving a beat-up old 1991 Camry, and it has the signature Toyota behaviour: turn the ignition key, drive to where you want to go with no nasty surprises, turn off the ignition. 16 years old, and it drives nearly like new.
Haven’t bought a Toyota in maybe 3-4 years, but my last 4 cars have been Toyotas and #s 3 and 4 are currently in my garage. So I guess I did my part in getting them to the top.
Can’t remember having a significant problem with any of them. Essentially all I want of a car is that it start when I want it to and get me where I’m going.
FWIW, I come from a family that is “mixed” - we own/have owned both GMs and Toyotas almost exclusively. Our last few vehicles:
1991 Chevy S-10 pickup (drove the hell out of it in high school, and aside from tires every 60K miles, it only needed a clutch replacement and new brake pads at 130K miles). Someone backed into it at 170K miles, at which point we got rid of it -the body panel repair was worth more than the truck was. I’ve never had a vehicle that I abused so much run so well for so long.
1999 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP: Traded it at 110K miles. Ran like a champ for 7 years, but later in life was suffering from a slipping transmission and blown valve covers. I also replaced the air conditioner blower motor and window motor at around 80K.
2000 Toyota Solara: Currently at 70K miles…no major issues, but the thing just EATS the OEM tires (every 25K needs new ones). We tried a high-mileage type, but it changed the whole driving experience of the car. We’ve had non-mechanical fit and finish issues develop, but no major problems yet. However, the recurring preventative maintence costs are a lot higher - tires, timing belt replacement (most GMs use timing chains, which last much longer), fairly frequent alignments and brake pads/rotors at this point.
My personal perspective is you get what you pay for…the GMs have been considerably cheaper to acquire and maintain, and we’ve had mixed results long-term. The Solara has just as many minor issues with it at this point in its life than the Pontiac did, but I expect that it will run longer (and its trade-in value is much better according to Kelly Blue Book).
Taking all those into consideration, I have no specific biases when shopping either brand. We did purchase a new GMC Acadia recently - for less $$$, it had many more features and better styling (IMHO) than the 2008 Highlander that I’ve seen featured in the car mags (haven’t been able to sit in it yet as its a new model, but the current generation Highlander did not do much for me style-wise).
I’d say GM is probably losing more sales and facing more competition from Hyundai, whose vehicles tend to sell at a similar price points and, as of lately, have been very nicely engineered. I drove a V-6 Sonata as a rental last year, and would pick it as a clear winner over the Camry (which I’ve also driven) or Pontiac G6.
My last 2 vehicles were GM pieces of crap. Both have had major engine and transmission problems. So when we went out to buy a new minivan, we bought an '06 Toyota Sienna.
I have no remorse whatsoever.
I don’t know what OEM tires are, but I’m on my third set on my 1999 Camry, 80K miles. The first time I replaced them, I went with Consumer Reports recommendation and paid a bit more. I’ve forgotten what brand those tires were, but they didn’t last as long as I hoped for what I paid.
So some cars are harder on tires than others? What causes that?
The only thing we’ve had to fix in 8 years is a sensor – something to do with the A/C, cost about $200. I love this car but I almost wish it wasn’t so reliable so I could justify trading it in on a Rav-4.
Original Equipment, Manufacturer. Tires which came with the car, or identical replacements thereof.
Weight of car, type of suspension, weight distribution, type of use, types of roads, weather, driver habits, quality of your pressure gaug…
The list goes on…
Not to go too off topic, but we check the pressure and rotate them often. I live in Florida, so the environmental factors are pretty reasonable. I think its a combination of the soft rubber speced for those tires and the sprung weight of the suspension. But even the high-mileage tires only lasted half as long as rated…unlike my experience with the same brand/tire type on a different car.
Its interesting hearing the same on your Camry, AuntiePam. At least I know I’m not alone 
Maybe we could buy our tires together and get a group discount! 
Re: tire wear. a lot of it is in stop and go driving. my wife wears out front tires in as little as 18-19K miles-one the highway, mine have lasted upwards to 85k miles.
A lot of this talk that American cars are so crappy doesn’t ring true to me. I never owned a car in the 70’s or 80’s, so maybe I missed the heyday of American car craptitude. Anyway, this article from CNN may explain why I was missing the buzz. Most of my life, I’ve driven Lincoln Town Cars. You’d be amazed at how inexpensive they are used. Usually, I don’t have porblems with the cars, despite high mileage.
On the other hand, our New Beetle has constant little problems. Nothing big, but lots of little things like the A/C going out, or the windows won’t roll all the way up.
It’s not just about reliability. What kind of gas mileage do you get on your Town Car?
For those who don’t want to click the link, according to J.D. Power’s surveys, Lincoln, Cadillac, and Buick all rank above Toyota and Honda in long-term quality. Ford and Chevrolet rank below them, but are still above average. Saturn, GMC, and Pontiac rank below average, but the rest of the Asian automakers (Subaru, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, and Isuzu) are the worst of the lot. European cars aren’t listed, but I know that most of them (VW, Mercedes, Audi) have absolutely horrible quality, and are basically where the American companies were 20 years ago. Chrysler’s quality passed Mercedes a few years ago, and last I heard the Germans were still in denial about it.
Consumer Reports still puts the Japanese on top, but they’re using “predicted reliability ratings.” Still, even they admit that the American companies have gotten much better in recent years.
As for me, my Saturn SC2 just hit five years old, and passed 100,000 miles quite a while ago, and the only real problem is that the auto-winder on my driver’s side window doesn’t work anymore. I can still use the window just fine, it’s just a minor inconvenience in that I have to actually hold down the button until the window is fully down. (I know, my life so so hard 
) Everything else has been routine maintenance: brakes changed twice now, coolant changed at 100,000 miles, battery died once. I had to replace two tires a while ago, due to a flat, but the other two are still soldiering along.
Actually, there was one more problem: my front tie rods needed to be replaced, but I suspect that this was due to a mishap where I ran over a curb pretty hard. (It was a rainy night, and I was driving too fast for the conditions. Totally my fault.)
I’m pretty excited about my new Toyota Matrix. I researched cars before buying and the Matrix keeps it’s value for quite a while, but the Chevy’s value takes a nose dive as soon as you drive it off the dealer’s lot.
My first car I bought was a Toyota truck. I loved it but I decided to sell it after 9 years, any problems it had were minor and it still ran well but it didn’t have air conditioning. So I got a Chevy mini-van (I had a few big dogs and drove them around a lot so I wanted something bigger). It had many problems in it’s first few years but it managed to just miss the requirements to declare it a lemon. But then it went and lasted 15 years, I think I kept it going by sheer willpower. It did still have frequent problems the a/c died a few years ago and the only reason I drove it as long as I did was because I had financial problems and couldn’t afford a new or used car. A/C repair would have cost more than the car was worth. Anyway, I went back to Toyota and I’ll probably stick with them from now on.
Yay! Toyota!
Not that its entirely relavent, but Car and Driver did a funny feature a few months ago - 24 hours of “LeMons” (not Lemans, the race track, but lemons).
They basically divvied up into teams, and each team had $500 to spend on a junker and run it in an endurance race). I believe the winner was a 1998 Oldsmobile with 180K miles - their conclusion was “GM cars run worse longer than anyone other brand”, which seems to sum up your experience