DETROIT (AP) - If Toyota Motor Corp. has eyes on taking the title of world's largest automaker from General Motors Corp. next year, it won't happen without a fight.
GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said his company has room for growth worldwide and will forcefully defend its title.
''I like being number one, and I think our people take pride in it,'' he told a small group of reporters at GM's headquarters. ''It's not something we're going to sit back and let somebody else pass us by.''
Last month, Toyota announced a global production target of 9.42 million vehicles for 2008, increasing the odds that it will surpass GM. That would easily exceed the 9.2 million vehicles GM is estimated to have produced in 2006.
Wagoner wouldn't reveal the company's 2007 production targets, but he said GM has the capacity to build more than 9.42 million cars worldwide. The company will fight for every sale, he said, but will stay within its strategy to rely on quality products to make money and less on selling cars and trucks with incentives.
If Toyota does pass GM, Wagoner said he would not be pleased.
''It won't be a happy day for me, but I've lost basketball games before in my life. You get ready and you learn and you go back the next day, and that's what we'll do,'' he said. ''We're going to fight to keep the position, and if one day we lose it, we'll fight to get it back.''
As its U.S. market share dropped when high fuel prices drove people away from trucks and sport utility vehicles, GM cut production last year. But the company is rolling out several new products and the North American market should be healthier this year, according to Wagoner.
Toyota, with a better balance of cars and trucks, capitalized on the consumer shift and raised its market share by two percentage points last year. For the first time, the company passed DaimlerChrysler to become the No. 3 auto seller in the U.S.
Toyota isn't concerned about becoming number one globally, said spokesman Irv Miller. The company is working to keep its quality high, focus on customers and roll out its new Tundra full-sized pickup truck, he said.
''A perceived sales challenge for global leadership is not something we're even thinking about,'' Miller said.
Wagoner also said he agreed with Ford CEO Alan Mulally's statements that the United Auto Workers (UAW) may have to make significant concessions in upcoming contract talks in order to keep GM competitive.
While he wouldn't be specific about what GM would seek in bargaining with the union, Wagoner said the company faces a cost disadvantage to competitors that needs to be addressed. But he would not say if GM would seek labor cost similarity with Toyota and Honda Motor Co., both of which have significant U.S. manufacturing operations.
The UAW will begin negotiating new labor contracts with Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler this fall.
Like Ford, GM is already talking with the UAW in advance of formal contract negotiations later this year, Wagoner said. The UAW already has helped the company with health care concessions and buyouts that will reduce its hourly work force.
Wagoner also announced that GM's global sales exceeded 9.1 million vehicles for the second year in a row and the third time in the company's history. Domestic sales were surpassed by international sales at 55 percent.
