In 2011, General Motors reclaimed its crown as the world’s largest vehicle manufacturer from Toyota, which was hit hard by the Japanese Tsunami and the Thailand floods, and as a result, dropped into third place behind the Volkswagen Group.
Overall, GM’s largest market in 2011 was China with 2,547,203 vehicles and an 8.3 percent increase over the previous year, followed by the U.S. with 2,503,820 sales, up 13.0 percent.
And the good news doesn’t stop there for the Detroit carmaker, which announced today that the driving force behind its success, the Chevrolet brand, recorded its best sales year ever in 2011 delivering 4.76 million vehicles around the world.
Chevrolet’s largest market was of course the United States with total vehicle sales of 1,775,812, up more than 13 percent from 2010, followed by Brazil with 632,201 units (GM didn’t say if sales were up or down) and China with 595,068 deliveries and an increase of 9.5 percent.
Other international markets in which Chevrolet posted notable increases in sales over 2010 include Vietnam (79 percent), Russia (49 percent), Turkey (30 percent) and Germany (21 percent).
“Chevrolet’s impressive growth in both established and developing markets is the result of a strong new product lineup that meets the diverse needs of consumers around the world,” said GM Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson.
The brand’s best-seller was the Cruze sedan with global sales of more than 670,000 in 2011 and more than 1.13 million since it first launched in 2009.
GM says that in the near future, it intends to make Chevrolet a more global brand with more than 60 percent of its sales to be outside the U.S. market.
On a corporate basis, GM’s two largest markets in 2011 were China, where GM and its joint venture partners increased sales 8.3 percent year over year to 2,547,203 vehicles, and the United States, where GM sold 2,503,820 vehicles, up 13.0 percent compared with 2010. GM is the market leader in both countries.
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