Though Toyota’s group global sales for calendar year 2008 were down 4% year on year to 8.97m units, its first such dip in a decade, it comfortably beat General Motors which on Wednesday said it sold 8.35m last year.

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“GM’s total sales were down 11%, reflecting continuing global economic pressures that include tightening credit, falling commodities prices and lack of GDP growth,” the automaker said in a statement.


GM’s nearly 3% growth in both the Asia Pacific and Latin America, Africa and Middle East regions partially offset North America sales that declined 21% and 7% in Europe.


In 2008, GM sold 5.37m vehicles outside the U.S., accounting for 64% of total global sales volume compared with 59% a year ago.


Fourth quarter global sales fell 26% to 1.7m vehicles. Most of that decline was reflected in 379,000 fewer vehicles sold in North America as the market yielded to a crushing lack of consumer confidence, and tightened credit requirements, in the United States.

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Sales last year rose in key four emerging markets: Brazil (up 10%), Russia (up 30%), India (up 9%) and China (up 6%).


Sales in Asia Pacific grew 14% in 2008.


GM said the total global industry shrank by about 3.5m vehicles in 2008.


Coming second apparently did not faze a top GM executive.


”To me the most important thing to make GM successful,” chief operating officer Fritz Henderson told the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit. Any time spent on worrying about being passed by Toyota is ”time wasted,” he said, according to local reports.