Toyota Overtakes GM as Best-Selling Auto Maker in U.S.

By contrast, GM reported a nearly 13% slide in results for a total of 2.2 million vehicles sold in 2021, as the semiconductor shortage took a bigger toll on its manufacturing operations and left dealers with fewer vehicles to sell. GM had been the no. 1 auto-seller in the U.S. for decades.

Other foreign auto makers and electric-car juggernaut Tesla Inc. also surged ahead in U.S. sales in 2021, siphoning market share from Detroit, according to company reports and analyst forecasts.

Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co. , for the second year in a row, notched sizable share gains, selling 738,081 vehicles in 2021 and boosting sales by about 19% over the prior year, the company reported Tuesday. Mazda Motor Corp. , Volkswagen AG and BMW AG also posted stronger-than-average sales, research firm Cox Automotive estimates.

Overall, auto makers sold just shy of 15 million vehicles in the U.S. last year, according to a forecast from research firm J.D. Power. That total would be up slightly from 2020, when the onset of the pandemic hurt car sales for part of that year. But it is a sharp drop from the mark of 17 million vehicles that the industry had eclipsed for five straight years before that.

Demand hasn’t been the problem. Vehicle sales set a blistering pace last spring as American car shoppers surfaced looking to spend their savings from lockdown on new wheels. But by summer, the chip shortage that had been hobbling factory schedules world-wide resulted in nearly bare dealership lots, curbing sales in the second half of 2021.

Forecasters expect another muted year of vehicle sales, even though the chip shortage is expected to gradually ease in coming months. Auto executives have said it could take the entire year to substantially replenish dealership inventories, which likely will curtail sales despite what dealers say is strong underlying demand.

Edmunds.com expects U.S. sales to reach 15.2 million vehicles in 2022, up slightly from the expected final numbers from last year. Analysts at RBC Capital are more bullish, pegging the total at about 15.8 million vehicles, with an expected surge later in the year as supply improves.

Lofty prices are expected to persist, as the seller’s market created by the inventory crunch continues, analysts said. The average price paid for a new vehicle hit a record $45,700 in December, 20% higher than a year earlier, J.D. Power estimates.

Record used-vehicle pricing is contributing to strong new-car prices, J.D. Power said, because buyers trading in their old vehicles have more money to work with. The average trade-in vehicle in December was worth about $10,200, up from about $4,600 a year earlier, the firm said.

“Pent-up consumer demand will keep inventory levels near historical lows,” likely leading to more record pricing this year, said Thomas King, president of data and analytics at J.D. Power.

The uneven disruption to production schedules jumbled the pecking order among auto makers in 2021. While the chip shortage and other supply-chain problems have affected all auto makers, GM and Ford Motor Co. were among the hardest hit, each having scrapped more than 600,000 planned vehicles in North America, according to research firm AutoForecast Solutions LLC.

A GM spokesman declined to comment on the company’s sales ranking. He said GM has given priority to its bestselling products, large pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, and expects sales growth this year as the chip shortage abates.

Other sales winners included Asian and European brands, as well as Tesla, which said Sunday that global deliveries jumped 87% in 2021, to 936,000 vehicles. Tesla doesn’t break out sales figures regionally. Cox estimated that its U.S. market share rose to 2.2% last year—about even with Mercedes-Benz —from 1.4%.

—Ben Foldy contributed to this article.

Write to Mike Colias at [email protected]