Toyota Takes the 2nd Spot in the US from Ford

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After 75 years of being in the number two spot in the US, Ford has given up the title to Toyota.

In 2007 Toyota managed to increase its sales so much that the automaker surpassed Ford. Toyota’s rise to the number two spot is largely due to the fact that Ford’s sales dropped 11.8 percent. Toyota’s sales increased 3 percent thanks to the new Tundra which had a 57 percent increase. In the end Toyota sold 48,226 more vehicles than Ford (2,620,825 vs. 2,572,599).

What mainly hurt Ford last year was a decline in fleet sales by 18 percent, although retail sales still dipped 10 percent. It will be interesting to see if Ford can manage to come back in 2008 with a revised F-150 on the horizon and the continuing success of the Edge crossover. Toyota will also have an all-new Corolla next year, so things could get interesting.

In other news:
General Motors managed to still hold onto the number 1 spot last year with almost 3.9 million vehicles sold, which was down 6.5 percent compared to the prior year. GM also cut fleet sales last year which is one of the reasons for the decline.

Chrysler Group took the fourth place last year with just over 2 million sales, a decline of 3.4 percent manly due to lower truck and SUV sales.

Honda came in fifth with almost 1.6 million sales, which was an increase of 2.5 percent. The success of the Fit, CR-V and all-new Accord helped keep Honda in the black last year.

Nissan came in sixth last year with just over 1 million sales. The automaker had an increase of 4.5 percent thanks to strong sales of the Versa subcompact.

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