For old-school guys like us, seeing is believing . . .

As someone who once, long ago, owned (briefly) a 1967 Toyopet Crown (a.k.a. Corona) with the infamous two-speed automatic transmission---and who burned through two torque converters in only 10,000 miles---I never thought I’d live to see the day that Toyota became the Top Dog of worldwide automakers, but the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are both reporting today that Toyota has now edged out General Motors as the top-selling automaker on the planet, based on first-half sales numbers for 2008. If the numbers hold up, it would mark the end of the General’s 77-year-reign as the king of global car companies.

So what’s next? For Toyota, what do you need to do to stay on top? Build more hybrids, obviously, but then what? What about the truck line? Would you bail on the fullsize pickup market after making a huge investment in it, and go back to building more small trucks again? We have it on fairly good authority that Toyota will be almost surely be building a vehicle similar to the ABAT (pictured) in the near future, an SUT most likely based off an existing passenger-car chassis . If you’re a Toyota guy, would you give it a look? We’d love to see Toyota go back to basics and build a bonafide small truck again similar to the ’89-94 Xtracab with a small six-cylinder (or even a four-cylinder, heaven forbid). If Toyota built a truck like that again, would you buy one?

What about GM? Can they reclaim the top spot once again? Will the plug-in Volt do the trick in 2010, or the next-gen Camaro? What about their truck and SUV line-up? We’d love to see GM keep the Hummer attitude and design priorities (if they’re intent on selling the actual division) and build a genuinely trailable midsize SUV with a Chevy badge based off the Colorado platform with skidplates, lockers, 4:1 transfer case, 33s, the works. When the Tahoe/Yukon SUV goes away in a few years, to be replaced by a unitbody vehicle, would you check it out, or look elsewhere for a fullsize rig? What about GM’s pickup trucks? Will direct-injection gas engines help, or smaller-displacement diesels? Now’s you chance to play Truck Boss and tell the world how you’d turn around GM, or keep Toyota on top, so sound off!