Toyota’s Sales Projections Show It Surpassing G.M.

The New York Times reports:

TOKYO, Dec. 22 — Toyota Motor said today it plans to sell 9.34 million vehicles next year, a figure that analysts said would put it ahead of troubled General Motors as the world’s largest auto company.

Toyota reported global group sales this year of 8.8 million cars and trucks, below G.M.’s 2006 sales forecast of 9.2 million vehicles. But the figures released today showed the two rival car giants on starkly different trajectories, with Toyota expecting to add a half million vehicle sales next year, at a time when G.M. is shuttering plants and laying off workers.

Surpassing G.M. would be a crowning achievement for Toyota, a company that got its start in the 1930s by reverse-engineering G.M. and Ford cars, and that spent decades catching up with Detroit. It would also end G.M.’s 81-year reign over the global auto industry, and mark another step in the rise of Asian carmakers.

Socialists, like the late John Kenneth Galbraith, thought this could never happen.According to their socialist world view ,markets tend toward monopoly with large firms dominating forever.How wrong Comrade Galbraith was.There's a lot more competition in the car industry than United States Postal System.