MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

GM regains in 2011 title as the world’s top selling automaker

Three years ago GM was bankrupt and emerged with federal aid from the Obama administration

General Motors Co regained its title as the world's top-selling automaker in 2011, less than three years after its 2009 taxpayer-funded bankruptcy under the Obama administration.

The Detroit-based automaker's return to the top slot comes as Japanese rival and former No. 1 seller Toyota Motor Corp slips in the rankings after an earthquake in Japan and deadly floods in Thailand hampered its production in 2011.

GM said it sold 9.026 million vehicles globally last year, up 7.6% from 2010.

Volkswagen AG, the German company vying to become the world's largest carmaker, finished the year in second place with 8.16 million vehicles sold.

Toyota will publish its final sales results for 2011 later this month but has projected sales of 7.9 million in 2011, down about 6% from a year earlier.

South Korean sister carmakers Hyundai Motor Co and its 34 percent owned Kia Motors Corp racked up total sales of 6.53 million last year.

The sales figures released by GM, which was the largest automaker until 2008 when Toyota took its place, include vehicles sold through its joint ventures in China. However some analysts extract those sales from GM's results.

Depending on how the results are tallied, Toyota may have finished the year in third place. However, Toyota would fall to fourth place behind Renault SA and its partner Nissan Motor Co if the alliance's sales through Russia's AvtoVAZ are included.

Including AvtoVAZ, Renault-Nissan sold 8.03 million cars worldwide last year. This includes the 638,000 cars sold by AvtoVAZ, in which Renault owns a minority 25%.

The International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, a global trade group based in France, has not yet released its annual ranking of automakers by production.

Toyota's 2011 worldwide sales tally included listed subsidiaries Daihatsu Motors Co and Hino Motors Ltd. Toyota's sales were hurt by a series of disasters that triggered auto parts shortages and curtailed its vehicle production last year.

But now Toyota is ramping up production to rebuild depleted inventory and will add output capacity in emerging markets such as Brazil and China this year. However, analysts said it also faced stiffer competition as rivals step up their game.

Toyota has lagged the sharper sales growth at rivals such as Nissan and Hyundai Motor Co because of a relatively slow push into emerging markets as it scrambled to meet runaway demand in mature markets in the past decade.

In a bid to catch up, Toyota is adding factories in Brazil, China, Thailand and elsewhere, aiming to sell half its cars in emerging markets by 2015, up from around 40 percent now.