Toyota Motor has regained its crown as the world’s biggest car company by sales, displacing Volkswagen as the embattled German manufacturer grapples with the fallout from its emissions cheating scandal.
Volkswagen had overtaken Toyota in global sales for the first half of 2015, threatening to end the Japanese group’s three-year reign as the world’s top-selling carmaker.
Toyota sold just over 7.49m vehicles in the nine months to September, 5.85m of which were outside Japan, while Volkswagen sold 7.43m. In the first six months Toyota sold 5.02m vehicles to VW’s 5.04m. Both saw sales fall 1.5 per cent for the nine months on a year-on-year basis.