For yet another year, the best-selling carmaker in the world is Toyota. They say if you come at the king, you best not miss. Toyota came at the old king (Volkswagen) and very much didn’t whiff. Can anyone catch the automaker?
You don’t need Rebecca Black to tell you it’s Friday, Friday here at The Morning Dump. Automakers are announcing full-year results and, while Ford had a good year from a sales perspective, there were some costs involved. One of the biggest issues in Q4? People are living longer.
General Motors has long had a large footprint in Canada, but that’s starting to go away as the company retrenches in the United States, leading to more job cuts. And while we’re on the topic of Canada, a whistleblower just took in a cool $1 million for helping the government discover what it calls a “bid-rigging scheme” involving a Canadian online auction company.
Toyota Remains The King
It’s hard to think of two carmakers more headed in the opposite direction than Volkswagen and Toyota. I remember back in 2009 writing about how Volkswagen was losing its edge by embracing beige, uninteresting designs (what I called the beigekrieg). Toyota was the king of biege at the time, but then the relatively young scion of the ruling Toyoda family (not that Scion) decided that his ancestral company could probably make reliable and interesting cars.
In the last 16 years, Volkswagen has pinballed from one problem to the next: a self-inflicted emissions scandal, overindexing on EVs, and not seeing the rise of Chinese automakers it helped train, to name just a few.
Toyota has had its own scandals, but has been able to weather the disruption in the markets better than basically everyone else, and this showed up in its global sales. For the calendar year 2025, Toyota and its various brands sold a total of 11.3 million vehicles, which is a record for the automaker. By comparison, Volkswagen sales fell slightly, finishing just below 9 million global sales. Hyundai grew by about as much as VW shrank, reaching 7.3 million sales.
Some of this is inertia, as Toyota has slowly built a reputation for building reliable cars. Some of this has to do with Toyota aggressively expanding in foreign markets. At least in the United States, a mix of affordable cars and hybrids seems to be the key, as Erin Keating over at Cox Automotive points out:
Six Toyota vehicles have MSRPs starting under $30,000, a critical advantage when affordability remains a top challenge for many consumers. According to Cox Automotive forecasts, the industry faces ongoing affordability constraints at the start of 2026, with average monthly finance payments hitting $767 in December 2025, the highest level in 18 months. New-vehicle affordability pressures are expected to keep total sales around 15.8 million in 2026. Still, in 2025, Toyota grew market share with standout new vehicles, including the Corolla Cross, which grew solidly in a crowded segment, up 7.3% despite strong competition.
[…]
Toyota’s “1:6:90” philosophy reflects strategic pragmatism: The rare materials needed to create one battery-electric vehicle (BEV) could produce six plug-in hybrids or 90 hybrids. Rather than betting solely on BEVs, Toyota maintains multiple powertrain pathways to meet consumers wherever they are on the adoption curve.
This approach proved prescient in 2025. After federal EV tax credits expired on Sept. 30, EV retail share fell to 5.8% in Q4 2025, down 2.9 percentage points from the prior year. Meanwhile, conventional hybrid sales climbed 27.6% to 2.05 million units for the full year. Toyota’s electrified portfolio – spanning gas, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and the forthcoming Lexus LFA Concept BEV – positions them to serve customers across the spectrum as the market adjusts to a post-incentive landscape.
With tariff challenges, relatively flat sales in Europe and the United States likely, and China continuing to favor homegrown brands, I don’t see anyone who can really challenge Toyota. Both Ford and GM have pulled back globally, and Hyundai might be able to catch up with Volkswagen, but it doesn’t have the footprint in the United States that Toyota does (yet). This could all change in a few years, but it’ll take a few years.
Ford Will Take A $600 Million Hit To Q4 Earnings Because People Are Living Longer
It’s a bad week to be an actuary at Ford, but a good one to be a Ford retiree. They’re living longer! Well, the retirees are living longer; I’m not sure how the actuaries will fare given that a miscalculation contributed to a $600 million loss, according to a company filing.
What happened? The Detroit Free Press has the news:
In the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Ford said it will take a “remeasurement loss” for its U.S. plans, which was largely due to actuarial losses compared to plan assumptions. A remeasurement loss means a company has reevaluated the value of long-term assets or foreign currency and found the assets have decreased in value compared to anticipated figures. Actuarial losses are financial shortfalls in pension plans. Ford said non-U.S. remeasurement costs were a result of measurement assumptions, including improved life expectancy.
One person’s good news is another’s bad news.
GM Lays Off 700 Workers At Oshawa
There’s a grimness to the news coming out of Canada, as the government there contends with the fact that its longtime ally to the south is doing all it can to reshore production. The latest hit is GM’s Oshawa plant, which builds the popular Silverado. A shift is being cut, which means about 700 union workers are out of a job, and more are likely to feel the impact.
GM is blaming the “evolving trade environment”, and the workers are blaming politics, per the CBC:
At the time, spokesperson Jennifer Wright told CBC Toronto that “forecasted demand and the evolving trade environment” were behind the cut.
GM Canada’s latest statement doesn’t mention tariffs. Still, Unifor National President Lana Payne said GM “has made a clear decision to cave to Donald Trump” in a statement on Thursday.
She said GM is making Oshawa workers “pay for that appeasement with their jobs.”
What’s amusing here is that Barra told workers (via The Wall Street Journal) that Canada warming up to China was a bad and inexplicable move:
Barra said Canada’s China deal, announced earlier this month, is counter to building a strong North American industrial base and to protecting jobs and national security on the continent.
“I can’t explain why the decision was made in Canada,” Barra said during an all-hands meeting with employees Tuesday. “It becomes a very slippery slope.”
It may very well be a slippery slope, but it feels disingenuous to say “I can’t explain” the decision when both General Motors and Stellantis have Lucy-with-the-football’d Canadian autoworkers again and again this year.
Someone Made $1 Million Telling On An Auto Auction For Bid-Rigging
The Justice Department gave out its first-ever $1 million reward for a whistleblower in a “bid-rigging” case involving online car-auction platform EBLOCK, a Canadian dealer-to-dealer wholesale online auction.
From the Antitrust Division’s press release:
EBLOCK Corporation offers an online auction platform for used vehicles. In November 2020, EBLOCK acquired Company A, another online auction platform for used vehicles. According to the Criminal Information and Deferred Prosecution Agreement filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, EBLOCK did not take immediate action after the acquisition to end the bid-rigging conspiracy and fraud at Company A. From November 2020 to February 2022, individuals at Company A conspired with individuals at Company B to suppress and eliminate competition for used vehicles sold on Company A’s online auction platform, in violation of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1. EBLOCK also did not take immediate action to end “shill bidding” on Company A’s platform, resulting in the placement of fake bids intended to artificially increase the sales prices for used vehicles, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343.
How did it work?
As described in the court documents, legacy employees at Company A conspired with employees at Company B to share bidding information and agree on the maximum amount Company A or Company B would bid on certain vehicles. Company A employees provided special access and user permissions to Company B that enabled it to view the confidential bidding information of other buyers and sellers on its auction site. The co-conspirators maintained a shared inventory of vehicles purchased pursuant to the bid rigging scheme, and they coordinated to relist those vehicles and place shill bids with the intention of artificially increasing the prices paid by legitimate buyers. They also misrepresented the numbers and identities of these fake bidders during the online auctions by commissioning the development of software that would automatically place shill bids under the names of actual auto dealerships without those dealerships’ consent. The co-conspirators pooled and split the profits from the scheme. During the course of these actions, various documents in support of the scheme were sent via U.S. Mail.
It’s a Canadian company, but they made the time-honored mistake of using the U.S. Mail. I wonder if USPIS got involved. I don’t know if it is against the law, but they also appear to be bribing bidders with fried chicken. I’ve now reported this, gimme $1 million please.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I made a joke about the song “Friday” in the lede, which was a song that was terrible in a confusingly endearing way. It went viral, and I think most people would just crawl into a hole and disappear forever if they’d made it. Not Rebecca Black! She’s gone on to have a career as a singer and a DJ. I respect a comeback, so here’s Rebecca Black covering Addison Rae’s “Fame is a Gun” for LIKE A VERSION.
The Big Question
Who could possibly take down Toyota?
Top photo: Toyota, DepositPhotos.com
The only thing Toyota remains the king of is bullshit and their 1:6:90 strategy just reflects their greed. By their “math” and given how many vehicles Tesla produced last year (~1.6 million), Toyota should have been able to make 9.6 million plug in hybrids or 144 million hybrids (not that any of their hybrids use lithium batteries in the first place), so not having every vehicle they sell at least be a hybrid makes their excuses for not making more electric cars ring very hollow.
VW deserves some allowance on their EV pivot, as it was basically required. As stated it was an own-goal due to cheating emissions, so my sympathy is limited.
Additionally, it’s completely their fault for sucking at it. For a company that invested so much into BEV development, they aren’t well received. Or really competitive or attractive options.
Did someone say that Ford was considering gifting all current retirees with free lifetime supplies of cigarettes, booze, and Big Macs? As a gesture of thanks for a job well done? 😉
The older I get, the more ‘boring but reliable’ appeals. By the end of this week, I’ll have spent the better part of three grand getting two of my three old cars to pass California’s smog test, and correcting some mistakes the previous owner had wrought upon the third one, including timing that was so far out of whack that not one but two people asked if my Volvo 240 wagon has been LS swapped.
All of which makes the idea of getting a ’90s-00s Toyota and just being done with all of this seem not so bad, boredom aside. A Highlander maybe… there were a couple of decent looking generations of them.
Is anyone else getting tired of the GeoCities load times after almost four years of paying a subscription? It was understandable in the beginning, but can we please put a few more dollars towards a faster back end? It’s 2026, not 1996.
The Pixel phone notification thing is second on my wish list. Anyone else unable to see the notification details on their phone? Sometimes if you time a reload just right, you can see them, but that seems like a ridiculous burden to have any hope of seeing notifications. Matt doesn’t seem to care so I’m hoping additional voices might spur some kind of attention.
I bought a Corolla Cross last year because I wanted an AWD, hybrid, subcompact crossover. It was the ONLY choice on the market at the time with just 3 filters. They were selling enough that I had to wait a month and couldn’t choose a color, which, post-COVID supply problems notwithstanding, wasn’t true for most companies.
PS I got silver, which isn’t too bad considering that like, 99% of new cars are Battleship Grey.
Yeah there’s currently only 2 subcompact crossover hybrids right now, both of which are priced dangerously close to compact crossover territory. A Crosstrek hybrid is hard to recommend at ~$35.5k when you can get a compact crossover like the RAV4 for about the same price, which is why I think there’s so few subcompact options.
We shared your position. We liked the CX-30 mostly, but we decided the hybrid was more important than Mazda’s commander knob (though we really wanted the commander knob!)
We put a deposit in October and there were only 2 in country that matched the specs we wanted. The wait until late December when we took delivery happened to be during the model year switchover, so instead of the barcelona red we thought we were getting, we were some of the first people to get Mazda’s soul red crystal on the 2025M/Y cars, which now of course has multiple small, but noticeable, chips in the hood paint, because this paint, though pretty, is paper thin..
I’m kind of obsessing over the smashed car in the top picture. Is that an Eagle Medallion? I immediately saw Renault 21 doors and what seems like its unmistakable rear wheel arch, but that indicator repeater behind the front wheel well is driving me nuts. I can’t find a single picture of a Medallion with that repeater, and I’ve been digging through google image results for quite a bit. What car is that?
EDIT: the tallights seem like a match for the Medallion wagon, and now I see that what seemed like a sedan trunk is actually the rear of a station wagon with the top cut off. I’m just going to chalk that repeater up to an owner mod and stop obsessing.
Who knew constantly iterating and expanding on a solid design instead of building a one or two cars and dumping the whole thing if it isn’t an instant smash hit was a winning strategy?
“Who could possibly take down Toyota?”
*calls “the gang”*
We got one more big job to do. We gotta get Carlos back INTO Japan and put him in charge of Toyota.
Hyundai/Kia is waiting there for Toyota screw up. Or if they can convince enough Toyota loyalists that their quality is good enough. They have a competitive offering in almost every Toyota segment except a pickup truck.
Or if you are like me, I can’t even find a Grand Highlander Hybrid to test drive, so maybe I take a chance on a Palisade Hybrid because Toyota and their dealers don’t seem to need my business.
Hyundai convinced me a few years ago with the purchase of a ’23 Sonata N-Line (after being a Honda, Acura and Lexus guy). Has been flawless.
No knock on Toyota or Honda at all, but there is absolutely no reason not to at least consider a Hyundai when considering the others.
10 years ago I would NEVER have written these words. Feels weird.
I hope Hyundai learned a valuable lesson from their Theta II engines. The car market is better when they are building good, reliable cars and pushing other competitors to do the same.
I know some people who have not had issues with their Hyundai/Kia vehicles. Plus the Palisade anyway has some features Toyota doesn’t even offer.
But I am spoiled. My current cars have needed very little for over a decade of ownership until my Prius had its head gasket go. Even after dealing with that, it is still a low cost of ownership spread over 175k miles.
Some time last year I went on Youtube meaning to subject myself to that awful ditty Friday for reasons since lost to memory. I then saw that she had new-ish music out and got curious. Imagine my shock to find the poor little 13 year-old that had her pop star dreams shattered by mockery and cynicism decided to stick with her own dream and her own program and had become an actual performer, not just a punchline. Seriously, much respect and good on her.
She has a good interview with Anthony Fantano on Youtube about the whole thing, worth at least a partial listen.
“Six Toyota vehicles have MSRPs starting under $30,000”
Toyota technically lists nine but I appreciate the writer counting the Corolla as one car with three different body configurations.
Good luck finding RAV4s at base MSRP, btw.
My local Toyota dealership does not have ADM. I have found that to be true.
Not so much a markup as a sort of “inventory trimflation”. 90% of the Ravs at my local dealer are 45k. None are below 33k.