(July 10, 2023) General Motors is showing that the end of its nine-decade reign as the U.S. sales leader was just a one-year blip, not a groundbreaking shift in the industry's pecking order. For a second consecutive year since, GM is solidly No. 1 at the halfway point. And the automaker is widening its lead over second-place Toyota amid signs that the market is strengthening, according to Automotive News.

Through June, GM outsold Toyota by nearly 250,000 vehicles, far more than the roughly 42,000 that separated the two in mid-2022, according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center.

The supply constraints that helped Toyota unseat GM in 2021 and that have hindered production throughout the industry for two years are easing, boosting inventory to feed pent-up demand from both fleet and retail buyers, analysts said.

Signs point to continued improvement in the second half of the year. The seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of sales was 15.8 million vehicles in June, at the high end of forecasters' estimates and the third-highest of the year, according to Motor Intelligence. That's an improvement from 15.1 million in May and 13.1 million a year earlier, when shortages of semiconductors and other key parts had dealers starving for products.

Source: Automotive News