General Motors Co. on Thursday reported 2011 sales that appeared to show it once again seized the title of world's largest auto maker by volume, eclipsing Volkswagen AG and setting off another auto-industry dust-up over how to count affiliate sales.
GM, which held the spot for almost eight decades before being dethroned by Toyota Motor Corp. in 2008, on Thursday disclosed it sold a bit more than nine million cars and trucks worldwide last year, a 7.6 percent rise over 2010. That would put it ahead of VW, which recently reported global sales totaled 8.16 million vehicles last year, reported The Wall Street Journal.
But shortly after GM's disclosure, Volkswagen argued it, in fact, was the top-seller last year if sales of its affiliates are included. Volkswagen's figures don't include the contributions of majority-ownership stakes in truck makers MAN SE and Scania AB, which will be added in a few weeks, a Volkswagen spokesman said. The truck makers might add 200,000 vehicles to VW's sales total.
GM's rivals also point out that the big U.S. auto maker's numbers are boosted by ownership stakes in China's SAIC Motor Corp. and Liuzhou Wuling Motors Co. While SAIC builds GM cars in China, Wuling's 1.2 million vehicles last year are mostly cheap commercial vehicles used only in China.
A GM spokesman said the company no longer focuses on being the world's largest auto maker. "Our goal is to be the best, not necessarily the biggest," said Jim Cain, a spokesman for GM. "If we had announced plans on world domination, we probably would have been quibbling with the sales of our competitors and that's as far removed from focusing on the customers as you can get."
Some analysts prefer not to count the Wuling vehicles in GM's global total because GM doesn't have a controlling stake in its partner. "We have to draw the line somewhere and this at least gives us some consistency around the globe," said Jeff Schuster, an analyst with forecasting firm LMC Automotive.
The tiff over global sales has parallels to a similar one earlier this month when BMW AG and Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz delayed reporting their U.S. sales by a day, each hoping to beat out the other for the title of America's top-selling luxury brand. BMW won by a nose.
Who is No. 1 and No. 2 globally isn't the industry's only unanswered question. Toyota appears to have dropped to fourth in the world behind the alliance of France's Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co., as long as you accept the alliance's counting methodology. Nissan-Renault, which essentially operate as a single company and are run by one chief executive, said they sold 8.03 million vehicles in 2011. That includes 638,000 vehicles sold by Russia's AvtoVAZ OAO, in which Renault holds a 25 percent stake. The alliance has signaled its intention to increase its ownership to 50 percent, but hasn't done it yet.
Toyota, meanwhile, said in December it expects 2011 sales to be around 7.91 million, down 6 percent, but it hasn't released official figures yet. Japan's largest auto maker was slowed because the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan forced the company to cut global production and curtailed sales at home and abroad. In Japan, Toyota's domestic sales dropped 26.8 percent in 2011, a big contributor to its fall in the global rankings.
The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association recently forecast motor vehicle sales will rise 19 percent this year, to about five million cars, trucks and buses. That would be about the same as in 2008, before the global financial crisis hurt economies around the world but is still below the level of 5.7 million to 5.9 million reached in the early 2000s.
While the rankings are mostly about bragging rights, the accounting methods has become a near annual scuffle as the competition between the top several auto makers increases. Whether to count the sales from affiliate auto makers is a point of contention.
Volkswagen has stated an intention to sell 10 million vehicles a year by 2018.
Rebecca Lindland, a senior analyst at IHS Automotive Consulting, said there is no clear guideline for what to count and what not to count, creating a headache for firms like hers.
"It's sort of like when you have a lot of step-brothers and sisters and someone asks you how many siblings you have," she said. "It hasn't worked out so great for the last couple who have been number one."
Ms. Lindland said she was involved in an internal discussion lasting more than an hour about whether to combine Chrysler Group LLC's figures with Fiat SpA. "It's very annoying, and it's also meaningless. The important thing is whether they are making money." Eventually IHS did combine the two, she said.
