Bob Carter, head of sales for Toyota Motor North America, said the Japanese automaker has been helped by strong supplier relations and adjustments it made after the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami.
“What we learned from the earthquake is we needed to carry more inventory of slow moving parts — and chips were one of the commodities we identified early on,” Carter told Automotive News via email.
With three months to go, the sales race is difficult to predict, said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights for car-shopping site Edmunds. The market traditionally tilts toward trucks more at the end of the year, which should favor GM, she said. And Toyota has announced sizable production cuts for October.
“I’d say it probably is up for grabs, because we don’t know how strong Toyota will start,” Caldwell said last week on Automotive News‘ Daily Drive podcast. “Their surplus of inventory has really dwindled down.”
Toyota, which historically has worked with inventory levels slimmer than GM, began October with fewer than 100,000 vehicles either at dealerships or in transit, the automaker told Automotive News.
GM has 128,757 vehicles at dealerships or on the way, but it has about five times as many U.S. franchises to spread its inventory across. A smaller dealership network and fewer vehicle combinations have given Toyota an edge, said Cox Automotive’s senior economist, Charlie Chesbrough.
“Their sales are much more efficient,” Chesbrough said. “There is a little bit less complexity that they have to deal with in this tight inventory environment.”
Larry P. Vellequette contributed to this report.
