Toyota closes in on GM for world's No. 1 automaker

TOKYO -- Toyota said Thursday it sold 9.366 million vehicles around the world last year, about 3,000 fewer than the tally from General Motors -- the world's No. 1 automaker for 77 years.

Earlier, Toyota Motor Corp. said it had sold about 9.37 million vehicles worldwide last year, making for an extremely tight race with U.S. automaker General Motors Corp., which said Wednesday it sold 9,369,524 vehicles.

The closer-than-ever sales race was up in the air when Toyota refused to give a number down to the last vehicle sold, saying it traditionally did not do so. But Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco confirmed the extra digit Thursday in Tokyo.

Both companies have denied they are too concerned about the numbers games.

Shoichiro Toyoda, a member of the founding family and former Toyota president, said gaining the top spot in the auto industry could be transient.

"We are not No. 1," he said when asked recently by The Associated Press how he felt about becoming the world's biggest automaker.

"It's just one moment," he said at a reception for auto manufacturers this month. "We need to just keep working harder."

Other Toyota executives have also consistently brushed off questions about becoming No. 1. Some company officials acknowledge they are even nervous about wresting the title because of fears about a U.S. political backlash reminiscent of the "Japan-bashing" in the 1980s and '90s, when the nation was accused of taking jobs from American workers.

But the razor-thin margin that determined last year's sales leader underlines GM's struggles, with recent years of job cuts, earning losses and plant closures -- as well as Toyota's phenomenal growth not only in the U.S. but in emerging markets.

Still, it was in new markets such as China that GM still led Toyota, managing to come out ahead for the time being.

But the competition in such markets is likely to determine the winner in the long run.

Toyota has seized the lead in ecological hybrids with its hit Prius, which runs on a gas engine and electric motor, selling more hybrids than any other automaker. And that edge came at a good time when consumers were looking for good mileage cars amid soaring gas prices.

GM, while still the U.S. sales leader, has seen its U.S. market share drop dramatically since 1990, when it controlled about 35 percent by selling nearly 5 million vehicles. Last year GM's share was roughly 23.8 percent, with sales of 3.8 million vehicles.

Aaron Bragman, an analyst with the consulting firm Global Insight, said much of GM's U.S. decline has been deliberate as the company cut incentives and reduced low-profit sales to rental car companies. GM's U.S. sales last year were 6 percent below 2006 figures, due largely to a 108,000 cut in fleet sales.

"If they had kept that fleet volume up, it wouldn't even be a competition," Bragman said.

Globally, GM said it did well in 2007, reporting the second-best sales total in its 100-year history.

The company said it set a sales record in China last year, selling just over a million vehicles, and doubled its sales in Russia to a record 258,000. It also set a record in Brazil, where it sold nearly 500,000 cars and trucks, the company said.

"I think we've done a heck of a job in positioning ourselves very well in where the growth in the world is in terms of the emerging markets, particularly Latin America, Asia Pacific, China, Russia, India," DiGiovanni said.

Toyota is setting up overseas plants to achieve growth in new markets, aiming to sell 9.85 million vehicles worldwide this year, up 5 percent from last year, under an ambitious plan it announced last month.

GM Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner has pledged to defend the global sales title, but said the company would not abandon its U.S. strategy of reducing incentives and low-profit sales to rental car companies in order to win.