Toyota '09 global vehicle sales fall 13% as VW gains

Toyota Motor Corp., the world's biggest carmaker, said 2009 vehicle sales including those of affiliates fell 13 percent as the global recession sapped demand.

Toyota sold 7.81 million vehicles worldwide last year, compared with 8.97 million a year earlier, the company said today. Sales declined in the U.S. and Japan, Toyota's two biggest markets, while rising in China, which passed the U.S. as the world's largest auto market last year.

Falling demand for Toyota cars compares with record sales last year for Volkswagen AG, which aims to overtake the Japanese carmaker in global sales by 2018. Europe's largest carmaker sold 6.29 million cars and sport-utility vehicles worldwide, an increase of 1.1 percent from 2008, sales chief Christian Klingler said on Jan. 11.

A global recession helped drag industrywide U.S. auto sales down 21 percent last year to 10.4 million units, the fewest since 1982, according to Autodata Corp. The slump caused the predecessor of Detroit-based General Motors Co. to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Toyota ended GM's 77-year reign as the world's biggest carmaker in 2008.

Toyota's U.S. sales fell for most of 2009, rising only in the last three months of the year and in August, helped by the government's "cash for clunkers" rebate program.

For the year, Toyota's U.S. sales dropped 20 percent to 1.77 million units, according to Autodata. GM's sales fell 30 percent to 2.06 million, according to Autodata.

Toyota's sales in Japan dropped 6.7 percent to 1.35 million units. The Japanese carmaker's sales in China gained 21 percent to 709,000. VW boosted China sales 37 percent last year to 1.4 million.