Original links are included though some may have expired.

The Numbers:

Automobile Production (in millions):

	1997	2006
World:	55.1	69.3
Japan:	11.0	11.5
United States:	12.0	11.3
China:	1.6	7.2
Germany:	5.0	5.8
Korea:	2.8	3.2
France:	2.6	3.2
Canada:	2.2	2.6
India:	0.6	2.0
Mexico:	1.4	2.0

What They Mean:

The cars of the 18^th and 19^th century were experiments. The world's first car was a three-wheeled tractor, powered by a steam boiler and built in 1762 by Lorraine-born military engineer Nicolas Cugnot. By modern standards it had serious design flaws -- no steering wheel, no brakes -- and crashed into a wall. Auto manufacturing was then abandoned for a century, until German engineers Otto and Daimler developed the internal-combustion engine in the 1880s. The first mass-produced car -- Benz Velo, made in France in 1895 -- came a few years later. The first U.S. Oldsmobile factory, ancestor of today's General Motors, began production in 1901; Japan's Seishoku built its first vehicle -- a city bus -- in 1904, and began mass-producing passenger cars almost precisely a century ago, in April of 1907.

The cars of the 20^th century -- and today -- are their mass-produced, gasoline-powered successors. As of 2006, there are about 610 million cars, trucks, and buses on the world's roads. (By way of comparison, there are about 7 million self-powered ships and boats used in transport, cruises and fisheries; 1 million airplanes; and 600 submarines.) Ward's Automotive's systematic count finds about 650 operating automobile plants around the world: roughly 260 of the plants are in Asia, 210 in Europe, 130 in the Western Hemisphere, 18 in the Middle East, 15 in sub-Saharan Africa, and seven in Australia. Together their output set a record at 69.3 million vehicles for 2006. The United States and Japan remain top producers, together accounting for a third of all new vehicle production; though total European Union output, at 18.7 million vehicles, exceeds both. By manufacturer, top producers are Toyota, General Motors, and Ford, together accounting for about 20 million new cars.

Change is coming, in one way or maybe more. One is scale. The largest change in production and buying habits over the past decade has come in China and India. Since 1997, world production has grown by 14 million vehicles, and the two giants together account for 6 million of the extra 14 million in car, truck, and bus production worldwide; and China has already surpassed Germany in total vehicle production. The other is a blend of energy and environmental factors, as climate change and long-term high energy prices force buyers, governments, and designers to rethink the gasoline-powered model. This latter challenge may be greatest in the United States, whose auto fleet consistently ranks below those of Japan, Korea, and Europe for fuel efficiency and carbon emissions.

Further Reading:

More on cars, air and climate --

Tailpipe exhaust from cars, trucks, and sport utility vehicles accounts for roughly one-third of the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), a principal contributor to global warming. The principal autos-and-air debate, though, has revolved around miles per gallon of gasoline -- "corporate average fuel efficiency" or CAFE standards -- rather than air quality or climate change. PPI's energy thinkers argue that to curb emissions more effectively, the law should instead focus on vehicles' output: How much tailpipe exhaust can the environment handle? A CO2 standard encourages greater use of cars that run on cleaner alternatives like electricity or advanced biofuels. The European Union is moving in this direction, as is California.

This year - the Democratic Leadership Council on auto emissions and fuel economy, as Congress prepares for energy debate:
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=254361
&kaid=131&subid=192

This decade -- PPI's Jan Mazurek and Roger Ballentine call for "tailpipe revolution":
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=252478
&knlgAreaID=116&subsecid=155

... and applaud California's experiments in encouraging hybrids:
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=116
&subsecID=900039&contentID=252950

And unflattering perspective from the Pew Center's fuel-economy comparison between the auto fleets of the United States, Europe, Japan, China and Korea (2004):
http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Fuel%20Economy%20
and%20GHG%20Standards_010605_110719.pdf

More on cars --

The oldest car -- Nicolas Cugnot's three-wheeled steam tractor:
http://www.3wheelers.com/cugnot.html

The most expensive car -- French-built Bugatti Veyron sells for $1.7 million. The company's site is available in English, French, German, Italian, and Japanese but not, so far, in Chinese, Korean, or Hindi:
http://www.bugatti.com/bugatti/index.html

The cheapest car -- India's Tata Motors, serving a huge low-income population, plans to introduce a $2,000 car:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2131980,00.html

Worldwide auto production stats, 1997-2006, from the International Organization of Automobile Manufacturers:
http://www.oica.net/