2011 turned out to be an ominous year for Japanese automakers like Toyota and Honda Siel. Japan was rocked by an earthquake in March 2011 that was soon followed by a tsunami and record floods, making it an unforgettable year, but for all the wrong reasons.
The series of natural disasters halted the production of Toyota, which consequently affected its worldwide sales. The Japanese automobile company even lost its ranking as the world’s largest automaker.
Yet, every cloud has a silver lining and that is exactly what happened when Toyota Corolla was termed as the world’s best-selling car, in spite of natural disasters that affected the company’s production. Toyota Corolla is manufactured in 15 countries and available in over 140 markets. It has been able to attract buyers as it is inexpensive, reliable and fuel-efficient. According to IHS Global Insight’s forecast, the company was able to sell around 1.02 million Corolla units in 2011.
Honda Motors also suffered because of an array of natural disasters that affected Japan earlier this year. In addition, the company was criticised for its redesigned Civic compact model. With the continuous dip in sales, Honda Civic has lost its position among the top 10 most popular cars in the world. The company was able to sell a mere 555,071 Civic units this year.
Capitalising on the loss in the market share of Japanese companies, Hyundai, Kia and Volkswagen are involved in a fierce battle for gaining top rank in global sales. Looking at some of the new faces in automobile industry, Hyundai Elantra has sold around 1.01 models, which is close to Corolla figures. Rebecca Lindland, the Senior Analyst of HIS Global Insight stated, “When these natural disasters happened, consumers around the world started realising, ‘Wow, there’s other really good product out there besides Toyota and Honda’.”
Apart from Hyundai Elantra, the Rio subcompact by Kia Motors has been ranked fifth on worldwide sales, which has sold around 815,000 models. Volkswagen, the German automobile maker, is planning to become the world’s largest carmaker by the year 2018. Small and mid-sized redesigned vehicles were launched by Volkswagen in 2011, which were able to draw a majority of buyers. Out of those redesigned models, Passat, Jetta and Golf were ranked among the best-selling cars. These models challenged some of the big names in the automobile industry. They achieved success as they expand and reached out to different countries and brought slight modifications to meet up the local demands.
Taking lessons from Hyundai and Volkswagen, Ford Motors and General Motors (GM) too had initiated similar strategies to capture the automobile market. Following aggressive plans has brought positive results for the companies, which are evident from the fact that Fiesta and Focus by Ford now rank sixth and seventh in the world’s best selling car category. Similarly, the all-new Chevrolet Cruze by GM was ranked ninth in the same demographic.
2011 is nearing an end and it would be interesting to see whether Honda Motors and Toyota would be able to regain their respective positions in 2012. With other top global automobile brands in the limelight, it would be difficult for the two Japanese automobile giants to overthrow them from the position of world’s most popular cars.
