Mumbai: Japan's top carmaker Toyota Motor Corporation outsold US rival General Motors Corporation by about 128,000 units to become the world's biggest automaker by sales volume in 2006, industry newsmagazine Automotive News said.

With sales of 8,808,000 units, Toyota outstripped GM which sold 8,679,860 vehicles, the Automotive News Data Center of the paper, which publishes a widely quoted annual ranking of the world's automakers, said

>GM's vehicles sales in 2006 were up 3.6 per cent from 2005, but 128,000 behind the Toyota's sales estimate of 8,808,000. Toyota's global sales gained 8.5 per cent from a year earlier in the publication's latest rankings.

"A little-known Chinese micro van played a role in Toyota 's victory," said the magazine in a report on its web site.

>In its final tally for 2006, GM included the seven-seat micro van sold under the Wuling brand in China, which saw sales of 420,140 vehicles. But GM owns less than 50 per cent of the three-way joint venture with China's Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. and Liuzhou Wuling Automobile.

Automotive News credits those sales to Shanghai Automotive, which it said owns a 51 per cent stake in the joint venture. That leaves GM's global sales just a hair behind Toyota.

In its ranking, the data centre includes sales of a subsidiary in the total for the parent company with the majority stake.

Detroit-based GM, which has claimed the top spot for 76 years, had counted those vehicles, totalling 420,140 units in 2006, in its own tally, the paper said.

Toyota's own sales figures, which correspond with Automotive News' tally, include sales at units Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors Ltd.

Even by GM's count, global sales in the first quarter of 2007 fell 90,000 vehicles short of its Japanese rival's. Toyota is almost certain to take the lead for all of 2007 after projecting sales of 9.34 million units against GM's forecast of 9.2 million.

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