It has been widely reported in the last 24 hours that the battle for the “World’s Largest Carmaker” title had been won…just…by GM. However, it now looks as though GM were using a little poetic license to inflate their sales figures.

Apparently, there are rules in a competition as important as this and it is essential that each manufacturer only reports the sale of cars from subsidiaries that they own a majority holding in, according to Automotive News.

GM, being a little cheeky, were including sales from their Wuling brand in China, 516,435 sales to be precise. It turns out that the General only owns 34 percent of the company that manufactures Wuling vehicles, SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co.

So, rather than finishing with a narrow lead the General is now playing second fiddle to Toyota, with a total of 8,885,599 confirmed, genuine, per the rules sales. Toyota is believed to have sold an estimated 9,370,000 but is yet to issue and official total – lets hope the estimate is not high… We can be fairly safe in the knowledge that the world now has a new numero owner car manufacturer.

GM enjoyed success around the globe and particularly in emerging markets such as China, but the story was different on the home front (North America), where it is being comprehensively beaten by Toyota.