After the March 11 disaster causing multiple problems to the country's automotive industry, Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, saw its production drop by 23 percent to 3.37 million units for the first half of the year. This includes sales of Lexus, Daihatsu and Hino vehicles. As a result, the Japanese company lost the title of the world's largest automaker that it held since 2008 to General Motors.

General Motors saw its sales rise by 8.9 percent to 4.536 million units for the first six months of 2011. For the time being, second place goes to the Volkswagen Group which sold 4.13 million units worldwide. Toyota has announced that its factories are already operating at 90 percent of their capacity since June and expects production to fully recover by November. Moreover, it will produce an additional 350,000 units from October until next March to make up for the lost ground. However, analysts do not believe that Toyota can recuperate quickly. For example, Takeshi Miyao of Carnorama (an automotive consultancy) has the following comments:

"Even if it recovers production it will take another few more months for sales to recover too, as it takes time to deliver the cars to the dealers. Therefore, Toyota may even trail VW in the full year as well".

I am in agreement to Takeshi's view. One of Volkswagen Group's brand, Audi, has achieved a new record with 652,970 deliveries of Audi automobiles worldwide in the first six months of the current fiscal year. Audi’s momentum seemed very strong but an economic downturn, which will slow down the sales of luxury cars, may turn the tide in favor of Toyota.

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