Ford Falsely Claims Toyota Corolla’s ‘Best Seller’ Title

While last week Ford claimed that the Focus was the best selling car this year to date, it is now apparent that this isn’t actually true.


Ford's claim was that 522,000 Focuses sold worldwide through the first seven months of the year. Toyota immediately answered by saying that through those same seven months, it had moved  722,000 Corolla’s.
When notified of the difference, Ford admitted to making a mistake, and said that the number it wanted to release was actually for six months of sales. In the first six months of 2012, Ford claims that it sold 489,616 Focus’ while Toyota only moved 462,187 Corolla’s. Again, Toyota answered with a new sales number of 603,840 units sold.

Toyota says that not all of the Corolla variants were accounted for in the sales numbers, as worldwide, the Corolla sells as the Matrix, Corolla Fielder and Corolla Rumion. All the sales numbers used by Ford come from the IHS, who did not account for these other Corolla variants.

Still, even if an apples to apples comparison was conducted, Toyota claims that just the Corolla sedan and Auris hatchback, two body styles also offered by the Focus, sold 524,000  units in the first six months of this year, still beating out the Focus.

The IHS’ numbers only encompass 90 percent of Toyota worldwide sales, another factor cited by the company that contributed to Ford’s misleading numbers.

[Source: Wall Street Journal]