The Year is 1931.

The Charleston craze has come and gone, Prohibition still makes it hard to get a bottle of booze, Al Capone just got popped for tax evasion, and the Depression is in full swing (but your average house costs less than $7,000 and gas was $0.10!!).

Why are we starting a modern-day news story by asking you to imagine a time ninety years ago? Because up until this past year, that was the last time anyone other than GM was the top-selling automaker in America.

In 2021, Toyota outsold GM in the US by 114,034 vehicles – 2.3 million to 2.2 million.

🚗 Driving the result (lol)… Toyota's supply chain management strategy. The Japanese automaker was able to better manage production issues than GM, including an ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips.

• But will Toyota keep the title? Probably not, according to Jack Hollis, Toyota North America's senior vice president of automotive operations.
• "Yes, we did surpass General Motors in sales," he told reporters during a call yesterday. "But to be clear, that is not our goal, nor do we see it as sustainable."
• GM attributes its 43% fourth-quarter sales decline and 13% tumble for the year to the ongoing shortage, which forced the company to direct its supply to the most profitable vehicles.

📉 Zoom out: Overall, it was a tough year for the industry – demand is still high but automakers are struggling to make enough cars to keep up. Average new vehicle prices jumped 20% last month to a record $45,700, per J.D. Power. 

US auto sales are expected to come in around 14.9 million vehicles, up 2.5% from 2020, according to Cox Automotive. Automakers typically sell more than 16 million vehicles a year.

• While GM's sales fell for the year, Toyota (10%), Honda (9%), and Nissan (9%) all posted gains. And, as we reported yesterday, Ford was the top-performing auto stock of 2021 (+140%).

+Speaking of Ford… The automaker is set to report Q4 earnings later today, one day after announcing it was doubling production on its all-electric F-150. The company's stock closed at a two-decade high.