Toyota Motor Corp became the world's top auto seller in the first three months of the year, passing rival General Motors Corp for the first time, the Japanese automaker said yesterday.
Toyota sold 2.348 million vehicles worldwide in the quarter from January to last month, company spokesman Satoshi Yamaguchi said, surpassing the 2.26 million vehicles that GM said it sold during the same period.
The results marked the first time Toyota has beat GM in global sales on a quarterly basis, he said.
While the figures represented only quarterly sales results, they foreshadowed a tough challenge for GM as it fights to hold onto it title as world's top automaker -- a claim usually staked on annual production figures.
Last year, Toyota's global output surged 10 percent to 9.018 million vehicles, while GM and its group automakers produced 9.18 million vehicles worldwide -- a gap of about 162,000.
Toyota has been gaining steadily on GM in recent years, and analysts have been saying it is only a matter of time before it eclipses its Detroit-based rival, which has seen its market share shrink in the US even as it leads sales in China.
While GM has struggled to shore up earnings with job cuts and plant closures, Toyota has expanded rapidly, thanks partly to its popular fuel-efficient cars, including the Camry, Corolla and Prius gas-and-electric hybrid.
In the US market, Toyota's sales rose 12.9 percent last year, pushing it past Chrysler Group as the No. 3 seller of autos in the US. Toyota's share of the US market climbed to 16 percent last month, behind GM, with 22 percent, and Ford Motor Co, with 17 percent.
Production-wise in the first quarter, Toyota made 2.367 million vehicles worldwide, up 2.6 percent from the same period last year. GM expected to produce 2.335 million.
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