kerry and Detroit and UAW voters:
Wake up Detroit - the kerry policies will devasate your companies and benefit the foreign auto makers. Kill the market for big trucks and SUVs - bye bye UAW!
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Toyota leaves Ford behind in global race
By James Mackintosh in London and David Ibison in Tokyo
Published: July 20 2004 13:55 | Last Updated: July 20 2004 19:08
Toyota Motor, the world's second-largest carmaker, is set to increase its lead over Ford Motor after boosting its sales forecast for this year as its American rival reported a loss in its automotive operations.
Toyota passed Ford in sales last year and said it expected this year's sales to hit 7.39m vehicles, up 9 per cent and 4 per cent above its earlier estimate. It is expected to remain the world's most profitable carmaker after making a net profit last year of more than twice that of its nearest competitor.
The success of Toyota - alongside smaller Japanese carmakers Honda and Nissan - has been an important factor behind the problems at Ford, as well as those at General Motors, the biggest producer, which reports second quarter results on Wednesday.
Japanese manufacturers have been able to steal market share from the American producers in their home market, recently starting to compete against US pick-up trucks and large offroaders, the most profitable vehicles. Toyota is also rapidly gaining share in Europe and is building new factories there as well as in China and the US.
On Tuesday the scale of the problem facing US carmakers was underlined when Ford slipped back into loss in its automotive business, although record financial services profits helped it beat its own forecasts for the second quarter.
Don Leclair, chief financial officer, said the company had deliberately sacrificed north American market share by reducing the least profitable sales.
He also warned that the high stocks of cars and trucks at American dealerships meant the fierce US price war - which has affected US carmakers more than European and Japanese rivals - was likely to intensify.
"Given the relatively high levels of dealer inventory across the industry we expect a tougher pricing environment in the second half of the year," he said.
However, Mr Leclair stuck to this year's target of pre-tax profits from carmaking of $1bn before one-offs. In the three months to the end of June the automotive division made just $83m, while restructuring costs and a write-down of the value of an investment in a hydrogen fuel cell company pushed it to a loss of $57m.
Toyota is aiming to take 15 per cent of the world car market in the next decade, almost exactly on a par with GM. But Fujio Cho, Toyota president, has repeatedly denied that he is aiming to pass GM. |
