Toyota Beats General Motors And Volkswagen In Q1 Sales to Retain Title Of Top-Selling Car Manufacturer

Toyota Motor Corp. (TYO:7203) sold more cars than any other global car maker in the first quarter of 2014 to retain the title of the world's top-selling car manufacturer.

The Japanese automaker said Wednesday that it sold 2.583 million vehicles in the last quarter, while Detroit-based General Motors (NYSE:GM), or GM, sold 2.42 million vehicles in the same period to come in second while German automaker Volkswagen AG (OTCMKTS:VLKAY) was at number three with sales of 2.4 million vehicles, according to Associated Press, or AP. Toyota’s sales grew more than 6 percent in the quarter over the same period last year while GM’s sales grew at a mere 2 percent.

The Japanese company has remained the world's top-selling automaker in a row since 2012 and ended last year with record sales of 9.98 million vehicles. GM had stayed on top of the heap for seven years until Toyota pulled ahead in 2008 only to cede it back to the U.S. company in 2011.

Toyota, which has suffered setbacks in the form of massive worldwide recalls and labor issues at its India operations over the last few months, expects to sell 10 million vehicles worldwide in 2014, according to AP.

Employees in Toyota’s India operations, Toyota Kirloskar, resumed work on Tuesday at its plant in Bidadi, an hour south of Bangalore in the southern state of Karnataka, after the factory had remained closed for more than a month because of a stand-off between management and workers with the latter demanding higher pay, better working conditions and a rollback of the suspension of some employees, according to local news reports.

Earlier this month, Toyota recalled 6.58 million vehicles globally to fix faults in the steering and seats of models such as Yaris, Urban Cruiser, RAV4 and Hilu. In March, Toyota paid $1.2 billion to U.S. investigators to settle a criminal probe against the company's handling of problems related to unwanted acceleration in some of its vehicles. In February, the company had recalled 2.1 million vehicles worldwide, due to a software problem that led to cars stopping suddenly. Since 2009, Toyota’s recalls have affected more than 14 million vehicles.

Toyota’s stock fell 0.16 percent at close on Tuesday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.