Toyota Motor Corp. last year took a big bite out of General Motors' lead as the world's No. 1 automaker.

According to Automotive News' annual ranking of the world's automakers by sales and production, Toyota gained by nearly 600,000 vehicles on GM to close to within 1.38 million sales in 2004. That puts Toyota on a path to catch GM within two or three years if the trend holds. Nearly a third of last year's gain came from the United States, where Toyota increased sales by 193,735 units while GM declined by 59,323 units.

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