Toyota Sold More Than GM In 2007

There are some news on the net which tell that GM has sold more than Toyota in 2007. But that's not true. The numbers of both automakers looked too close to call, but GM was counting its sales in China in its overall total.

GM had a solid year in 2007, with sales growing all over the world (except in the U.S.), but it is now the world’s second-largest automaker. GM had included 516,435 vehicles of the Wuling brand in China as part of its total, despite owning a minority share in the operation.

The industry practise is to only include sales of majority-owned subsidiaries, which meant GM slipped well behind Toyota with 8,885,599 sales in 2007, while the Toyota managed an estimated 9,370,000. Official figures from Toyota will be released in a few weeks.

Other manufacturers such as Ford, are also not allowed to count sales of minority owned subsidiaries such as Mazda (Ford owns 33.4 percent of Mazda).

Lexus LS600h Sales Three Hundred Percent More Than Expected

Remember when the $100K+ price tagof the Lexus LS 600h announced, flagship of Lexus line-up. There was aplenty of head-scratching. The car has been treated rather unkindly by the motoring press and boasting a less-than-stellar MPG improvement.

At that time Lexus said it only planned to sell 2,000 of the hybrid cruisers per year, and that they already had orders for 1,650 of them. Then the car came out and it has sold 6,093 worldwide through October. The car only went on sale in July. -Continued after the jump...

It is maybe too early to say but it seems like Lexus has done the same thing with the LS that Toyota did with the Prius.

While Mercedes and Audi are busy working on luxury green cars, Lexus has a car on lots that lets luxury buyers look green. Whichever one the buyers are going for, it appears to be working.