Toyota Has the Best-Selling Car of All Time
Lisa Steuer McArdle
· 3 min read
For the majority of the last 30 years,
Toyota
has been the world’s largest automaker, according to an infographic shared by Alan’s Factory Outlet
.The data shows the most purchased cars (not including trucks and SUVs) in the U.S. from 1978 to 2020—a time period that saw 348 million car sales in the country, which is an average of 8.1 million cars a year.
Toyota’s top car
According to the
Reader’s Digest
, Toyota has the world’s best-selling car of all time with the Toyota Corolla
. Since its debut in 1966, more than 49 million Toyota Corollas have sold worldwide. It’s also one of the most widely available cars globally, as factories worldwide produce high volumes of the car to keep up with demand. As Toyota’s most successful vehicle, one in five vehicles sold is a Corolla, according to Alan’s Factory Outlet.
The car is a popular pick for its reliability, safety, gas mileage, longevity, and affordable price tag. Over the years, Toyota has continually made an effort to upgrade the Corolla to make it even more user friendly and safe.
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Sales trends of Toyota and other automakers
MORE: Toyota Tops the List of Fastest-Selling Cars for June 2021
It’s interesting to look at the U.S. data on the infographic and consider how current events of each year affected car sales.
For instance, the infographic shows that car sales were particularly strong after the 1979 oil crisis. That’s most likely because due to high oil prices, consumers avoided less fuel-efficient trucks and SUVs—which were not included in the data.
From 1978 to 1988, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Chrysler dominated the industry by having the best-selling cars in the country.
In the early 1990s, the Honda Accord was very popular for a few years, followed by five years of top sales of the Ford Taurus from 1992 to 1996. Toyota then grabbed the top spot with the Toyota Camry from 1997-2000.
The Honda Accord took the top spot back in 2001, but then it went back to the Toyota Camry, which has been at the top ever since.
In addition, that data shows that throughout most of the 20th century, U.S. car sales were led by American manufacturers. Japanese manufacturers began to take over in the late 1980s in terms of affordability, reliability, and overall sales.
Why Toyota is so popular
Consumers like Toyota because the cars have a reputation of reliability, affordability, safety, and efficiency. Camrys themselves also have a high resale value, with high ownership value and low incidence rates.
The Toyota Camry, which has dominated car sales each year for a while, seems to be considered one of the most reliable cars of all time and has a long history of high owner satisfaction ratings.
In fact, in almost every year since 2000, the Toyota Camry has received either a four or five out of five owner satisfaction rating, according to Alan’s Factory Outlet.
As for the auto world’s best-selling car of all time—the Toyota Corolla—it is still considered reliable and safe, plus it offers great mileage today. On top of everything else, its $20,000 price tag means it’s still competitively priced.
