Some foreign auto makers and electric-car juggernaut Tesla Inc. likely surged ahead in U.S. sales in 2021, siphoning market share from Detroit, as a global computer-chip shortage dealt an uneven blow to the car business.

Final U.S. sales tallies, scheduled to be released by most major auto makers later Tuesday, are expected to show that Toyota Motor Corp. finished as the top car company in annual sales for the first time, unseating General Motors Co., which has been No. 1 for decades.

Overall,...

Some foreign auto makers and electric-car juggernaut Tesla Inc. likely surged ahead in U.S. sales in 2021, siphoning market share from Detroit, as a global computer-chip shortage dealt an uneven blow to the car business.

Final U.S. sales tallies, scheduled to be released by most major auto makers later Tuesday, are expected to show that Toyota Motor Corp. finished as the top car company in annual sales for the first time, unseating General Motors Co. , which has been No. 1 for decades.

Overall, auto makers sold just shy of 15 million vehicles in the U.S. last year, according to a forecast from research firm J.D. Power. That total would be up slightly from 2020, when the onset of the pandemic hurt car sales for part of that year. But it is a sharp drop from the mark of 17 million vehicles that the industry had eclipsed for five straight years before that.

Demand hasn’t been the problem. Vehicle sales set a blistering pace last spring as American car shoppers surfaced looking to spend their savings from lockdown on new wheels. But by summer, the chip shortage that had been hobbling factory schedules world-wide resulted in nearly bare dealership lots, curbing sales in the second half of 2021.

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Forecasters expect another muted year of vehicle sales, even though the chip shortage is expected to gradually ease in coming months. Auto executives have said it could take the entire year to substantially replenish dealership inventories, which likely will curtail sales despite what dealers say is strong underlying demand.

Edmunds.com expects U.S. sales to reach 15.2 million vehicles in 2022, up slightly from the expected final numbers from last year. Analysts at RBC Capital are more bullish, pegging the total at about 15.8 million vehicles, with an expected surge later in the year as supply improves.

Lofty prices are expected to persist, as the seller’s market created by the inventory crunch continues, analysts said. The average price paid for a new vehicle hit a record $45,700 in December, 20% higher than a year earlier, J.D. Power estimates.

Record used-vehicle pricing is contributing to strong new-car prices, J.D. Power said, because buyers trading in their old vehicles have more money to work with. The average trade-in vehicle in December was worth about $10,200, up from about $4,600 a year earlier, the firm said.

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“Pent-up consumer demand will keep inventory levels near historical lows,” likely leading to more record pricing this year, said Thomas King,

president of data and analytics at J.D. Power.

The uneven disruption to production schedules jumbled the pecking order among auto makers in 2021. While the chip shortage and other supply-chain problems have affected all auto makers, GM and Ford Motor Co. were among the hardest hit, each having scrapped more than 600,000 planned vehicles in North America, according to research firm AutoForecast Solutions LLC.

GM was among the hardest hit by the chip shortage and other supply-chain problems.

Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Toyota was forecast to have sold about 2.3 million vehicles in the U.S. last year, up about 10%, according to research firm Cox Automotive. That would for the first time edge out GM, which likely sold about 2.2 million, a 14% decline, Cox said. A GM spokesman declined to comment on the company’s sales ranking. He said GM has given priority to its bestselling products, large pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, and expects sales growth this year as the chip shortage abates.

Other sales winners included Asian and European brands, as well as Tesla, which said Sunday that global deliveries jumped 87% in 2021, to 936,000 vehicles. Tesla doesn’t break out sales figures regionally. Cox estimated that its U.S. market share rose to 2.2% last year—about even with Mercedes-Benz—from 1.4%.

Korea’s

Hyundai Motor Group was expected to log sizable market-share gains for the second straight year. It boosted sales by about 22% last year, Cox estimates, second only to Tesla’s projected 61% increase. Mazda Motor Corp., Volkswagen AG and BMW AG also posted stronger-than-average sales, Cox estimates.

Write to Mike Colias at Mike.Colias@wsj.com