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Toyota overtakes VW sales

October 26, 2015

Japan's Toyota has reported its nine-month sales figures, showing that the company shifted more vehicles than German rival Volkswagen. Both firms had to announce massive recalls recently, albeit for different reasons.

https://p.dw.com/p/1Gu95
Toyota facility in Japan
Image: picture-alliance/dpa

Toyota raced back to the top of the global sales table after logging 7.498 million vehicles in the first three quarters of 2015, the Japanese carmaker reported Monday.

Although the figure meant a 15-percent drop year-on-year, Toyota managed to sell more cars than Volkswagen, which had reported nine-month sales totaling 7.43 million vehicles.

Toyota is thus the world's largest carmaker by sales again, following VW's brief stay at the top in the first half of the year.

Both involved in recalls

The Japanese auto maker looks set to keep the crown for some time to come as Germany's Volkswagen tries to overcome a large-scale pollution scandal that broke after it was revealed that the company had installed cheating software in millions of its diesel-engine cars to thwart emission tests in many parts of the world.

The Wolfsburg-based company had to start a huge recall to fix the rigged vehicles by the end of 2016.

But Toyota, too, is in the middle of another recall, affecting up to 6.5 million cars globally. The company announced last week the cars would have to be fixed because of a faulty power-window switch potentially able to cause overheating and the vehicles to catch fire.

hg/pad (dpa, AP)