TOYOTA held onto its status as the world's top-selling automaker in the first quarter of this year, although the three-way race with General Motors and Volkswagen is proving tight, as its sales fall in China and Japan.

Toyota Motor Corp said yesterday it sold 2.43 million vehicles during January-March, outpacing US automaker GM at 2.36 million vehicles and Volkswagen of Germany at 2.27 million vehicles.

Toyota's first quarter sales fell 2.2 percent from a year earlier, while those for GM were up 3.6 percent and Volkswagen's jumped 5.1 percent.

GM's quarterly results were within about 69,000 vehicles of Toyota's.

The Japanese maker of the Prius hybrid and Camry sedan reclaimed its crown as the world's top automaker last year, after losing it to GM a year earlier, when it was hit by a tsunami and quake in northeastern Japan.

GM had been No. 1 for seven decades before losing that title to Toyota in 2008.