But for the January to September period it sold 7.43m vehicles, flat on the previous year and behind Toyota on 7.5m – though Toyota sales were lower year-on-year.
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Its closest rivals were Volkswagen, which sold 7.43 million vehicles and General Motors Corp., which sold 7.2 million. Taking over is Japanese automaker Toyota, and they are no stranger to the position of top dog.
Despite regaining top spot, Toyota’s sales were still down 1.5% on the same period past year.
“Toyota will be the No. 1 for this year”, auto analyst for Advanced Research Japan, Koji Endo said, according to Bloomberg.
Diesel models accounted for 20% of Volkswagen’s US sales coming into September, and about half of its sales in Europe and other markets.
But Toyota, too, is in the middle of another recall, affecting up to 6.5 million cars globally.
The German company announced that its cars sold in Morocco have not been affected by emissions fraud adding, “Moroccans who ordered Volkswagen cars have not cancelled their orders”. Still, we can expect Volkswagen to try to pick things up by discounting its vehicles in hopes of generating more sales.
Toyota’s group sales in Japan fell 7.8% to 1,646,000, partly on higher minivehicle ownership taxes. However, the numbers were counted around two weeks after the scandal hit, meaning that the impact on sales can’thave manifested itself.
After briefly leading the industry in global vehicle sales this summer, Volkswagen has now lost the crown to perennial leader Toyota which looks set to remain the world’s largest automaker by sales-and likely profits, too-in 2015.
Earlier this year, German automaker Volkswagen declared itself the biggest automaker in the world, stealing the title from long-time holder Toyota.
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The influence of the emissions scandal on sales during the first nine months was limited, though.
