For those of you keeping score at home, it's GM 9,030,000 to Toyota's 7,900,000 for 2011.
Those are "around" numbers for the number of vehicles sold in 2011 by the automakers from the Associated Press.
GM has retaken a crown it owned for 77 years before Toyota snatched it away in 2008.
Since that time, Volkswagen has been an up and comer as well. That company is the no. 2 automaker. It sold around 8,160,000 vehicles last year.
But some argue there's some fuzzy math going on to make GM the "top automaker" in the world.
More from the Associated Press:
Some analysts have said that VW is the world's biggest automaker because GM's figures include vehicles made by its Wuling joint venture in China. Many don't count Wuling because GM doesn't have controlling interest in the company, but GM includes it in global sales figures. Excluding Wuling, GM would have been topped by Volkswagen. Being the world's top-selling automaker doesn't mean much for the bottom line. But GM retaking the title is an example of how far the company has come since its 2009 bankruptcy.
Bloomberg Business Week's Tim Higgins quotes one analyst saying the top automaker crown means "bragging rights" and might help with stock prices.
Higgins writes GM's stock did go up with the news, but the stock would have to go up significantly before the U.S. government would break even on its investment:
GM rose 0.5 percent to $24.63 at 11:26 a.m. New York time. The U.S. government still owns almost a third of GM. The government would have to sell its stake at an average of $53 a share to break even. GM earned $6.17 billion in 2010 and $8.47 billion in the first nine months of last year.
