Nissan i
John Mahoney31 Jul 2017
NEWS

Nissan-Renault becomes world's largest car maker

First half results of 2017 sees the French-Japanese Alliance leap ahead of the Volkswagen Group

Renault-Nissan has leapfrogged both Volkswagen and Toyota to become the world's largest car maker in the first half of 2017.

Producing an incredible 5,268,079 vehicles, Renault-Nissan exceeded both the 5,155,600 the Volkswagen Group made and beat the 5,129,000 third-place Toyota manufactured.

Despite the sales achievement, a spokesman for Renault-Nissan Alliance was quick to announce that the number one sales spot was meaningless.

Commenting on the sales figures, Nissan's investor relations boss, Joji Tagawa said behind the scenes bosses "didn't really care whether we were number one, number two, or number three.

"That's not an important indicator", Tagawa told journalists.

Commenting on the results, Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn announced that his car making giant would "continue to leverage our significant economies of scale and global market presence".

The boss of the Alliance, that recently swallowed up Mitsubishi, also promised that his automaker would maintain a "strong technology line-up" and would offer customers "breakthrough electric models".

The announcement that Renault-Nissan had leapt into number one clearly ruffled some feathers among its rivals.

Volkswagen reacted by announcing that it had actually manufactured 5.43 million cars in the first six months, while Toyota claimed during the first half of this year it had produced 5.29 million units.

Sadly, for both Toyota and VW, the industry currently only measures size in sales, so Renault-Nissan's place at the top of charts remains safe.

GM, meanwhile, made 4.7 million cars in the first six months of this year.

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