Americans bought 15,603,518 new cars and light trucks last year. Let that number roll around in your head for a minute. Fifteen million, six hundred and three thousand, five hundred and eighteen. That’s one vehicle for every man, woman, and child in the cities of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Austin, Texas, combined. (But none for anybody in Topeka. Sorry, Kansans.) It’s nearly 30 vehicles sold every minute.
While Americans bought a new car or truck every two seconds, though, people worldwide bought 2.6 vehicles per second. An astonishing 12 percent of those were Toyotas. Including Daihatsu and its Hino commercial line, the Japanese giant’s 9.98 million sales are a New York pizza slice out of the 83.23 million new vehicles gobbled up in 2013. According to IHS, which is in some ways the Toyota of industry-data gathering, the world will see 100 million new-vehicle sales by 2018. Toyota, for its part, is expecting to sell more than 10 million vehicles in 2014.
The silver medal goes to Volkswagen, with 9.73 million sales (47 of them Bugatti Veyrons), while General Motors managed 9.72 million. Lest there be any question of who’s the boss, though, Toyota out-earned VW and GM combined in the fourth quarter of 2013.
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Something Old, Something New
Last year’s 83.23 million sales are a neat tenth of the active global fleet. According to last count by the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, there are 833.34 million light vehicles currently in use worldwide. Add in heavy trucks (because larger numbers bruise brains) and you get 1.14 billion vehicles.
The Path to Riches
Listed alphabetically here are the 50 largest car markets in the world. The 10 biggest are in gray. Within each of those, we’ve broken out the market share held by Toyota, Volkswagen, and General Motors.
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