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" Ichiban! For those of you who still don&amp;#039;t understand Japanese, that means No. 1. And based on sales projections by both General Motors and Toyota, 2007 will see a monumental shift in the automotive universe: Toyota will be ichiban. And GM\u2014the world&amp;#039;s largest automaker since long before there was television\u2014will slip to No. 2.  As 2006 draws to a close, GM expects to sell 9.2 million vehicles worldwide, Toyota 8.8 million. But Toyota anticipates selling more than 9.3 million vehicles next year. And while most industry experts feel that GM would be lucky to maintain the status quo, it&amp;#039;s more likely the company&amp;#039;s volume will continue to shrink. Toyota has already surpassed Ford to gain second place worldwide, but the way things have been going at Ford lately, that&amp;#039;s hardly earth-shattering. So what does this all mean? Obviously, while GM&amp;#039;s bureaucracy has spent the last several years wandering up and down a maze of blind marketing alleys and non-core enterprises\u2014all as the design, engineering and quality of its vehicles languished\u2014Toyota kept focused on solid growth through well-intentioned, conservatively designed and marketed, quality vehicles. Does it mean that the Toyota is an unstoppable juggernaut poised to swallow the automotive world? No more so than GM was 50 years ago, when it ruled the roost. General Motors is not a company run by talentless, bumbling fools. Au contraire. The people at GM are intelligent, creative and, now, angry. They&amp;#039;re out to prove that their vehicles are at least as good as Toyota&amp;#039;s\u2014and everyone else&amp;#039;s\u2014if not better. They&amp;#039;ve got a tough road to go, and they know it. Will the General ever unseat Toyota as the world&amp;#039;s ichiban carmaker? Probably not. But will Toyota sit atop the heap forever? Definitely not. As GM had its moment, so shall Toyota, but eventually Toyota, too, will be unseated. Perhaps by Hyundai. Perhaps by Chery. Perhaps by a conglomeration of automakers. But it&amp;#039;s critical for Toyota to remain focused on what got them to the fore, because even if they continue to remain sharply focused on quality, affordable, timely and appealling vehicles, sooner or later, someone will do it better. \u2014Don Chaikin "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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