Toyota Motor has clinched the sales-based title of 'the largest automaker in the world' from its rival General Motors! The Japanese automaker outperformed its competitor with its 8.97 million sales in 2008, as against the Detroit automaker's sales of 8.35 million.

While Toyota - which sold 622,000 more cars and trucks worldwide - showed a 4% drop from its global sales the year earlier; the drop in GM's sales was 10.8% compared to the 2007 figures.

Industry insiders expected Toyota to overtake GM in 2008 - both the automakers had displayed vanity to a fault at the end of the year 2007, when Toyota sold 3,000 vehicles less than GM.

GM sees no hope for the outlook for sales in its hub of US market improving in the near future. During a conference call, Mike DiGiovanni - the company's sales analyst - said that in January, the seasonally-adjusted annual US sales rate will drop below the benchmark 10 million vehicles; the first time ever since 1982.

In spite of the sudden fall in demand in the last quarter of 2008, industry-wide sales were still able to sustain themselves just above the 10 million levels in each month of the quarter.

Cautioning that "2009 will be a very difficult year," DiGiovanni said GM is hopeful that later this year the economic stimulus plans under consideration in the US and also in other countries would hopefully bring about a change in the sales for the better!