Toyota Motor predicts for 2012 to recover the sales record achieved in 2010: 8,4 million passenger cars worldwide and the title of leading automaker. However, 2011, whose fiscal year in Japan will end next March, will see the Japanese company downgraded below General Motors and Volkswagen.
Le sales estimates for the current year they come to 7,38 million vehicles, 220.000 fewer than the 7,6 million previously reported. The decline is a consequence of the exceptional ones natural cataclysms that swept East Asia during much of 2011: first the earthquake in Japan and then the heavy floods that hit Thailand. Events that have forced Toyota to block local factories, specialized in the production of components intended for branches located all over the world.
In the meantime, the two main competitors of the Japanese company rejoice, General Motors and Volkswagen: the first, because it regains the world record lost in 2008 and the second because it sees the project of becoming the world's largest manufacturer slowly materialize by 2018.
