The Big Picture

Nobody in the auto business was the least bit surprised when Toyota overtook Ford to become the world's number-two automaker in 2003. And nobody laughed when Toyota chairman Hiroshi Okuda recently asserted his company's next target was 15 percent of the world auto market. Especially when they figured out that means Toyota fully expects to end GM's near 80-year reign as the world's number-one automaker sometime soon.

Last year, Toyota sold 7.54 million cars and trucks worldwide, up from 6.78 million in 2003. It has officially forecast global sales of 8.5 million vehicles in 2006, and a leaked report in Japan suggested it would be selling 9.7 million worldwide by 2008, although company sources later insisted this was merely a "loose internal target." GM, by contrast, sold about 8.8 million vehicles in 2003 and just on nine million in 2004, for a global market share of 14.5 percent. GM execs remain resolutely upbeat: "We've been ahead 73 years in a row, and I think the betting odds are we'll be ahead for the next 73 years," chairman Rick Wagoner told journalists at the Detroit auto show earlier this year. But you don't have to be a math professor to figure he'd be betting against a trend.

Whatever you do, though, don't mention the term "global domination" to anyone at Toyota, particularly anyone at Toyota's U.S. operations. They jump like they've been hit by a taser: "I don't think when that number came out it was ever envisioned that 15 percent would mean global dominance or that we'd assume control from GM," said one senior exec recently. "I don't think anyone had any idea that's what that 15 percent meant." Yeah, right...

Noted auto industry analyst Maryann Keller, author of "Collision: GM, Toyota, and Volkswagen and the Race To Own the 21st Century" and a longtime Toyota watcher, says the company is obsessed with market share and that obsessive focus "has not only made Toyota number two in the world; it's also made Toyota an extremely rich company." How rich? Well, last time I looked at the share prices, Toyota was worth more than GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler combined. And Toyota probably could buy GM outright right now with the operating profit it made last year alone--roughly $16 billion. This is a tough, focused, highly successful automaker. Just don't say it out loud.