Is GM fudging the numbers in their Battle Royal with Toyota for the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world?

Well according to Automotive News, GM might have sucker punched Toyota while the referees back was turned.

Numbers released yesterday seemed to indicate a nose to nose battle between the two automakers. GM had a solid year in 2007, with global sales up 1.9 percent from 2006. But, Automotive News says it is now the world's second-largest automaker.

GM slipped well behind Toyota Motor Corp. in global sales. GM sold 8,885,599 total vehicles in 2007, while Toyota says it sold an estimated 9,370,000. Toyota will issue an official total in about a month.

Automotive News said GM included in its total 516,435 vehicles of the Wuling brand in China.

But GM owns only 34 percent of the Chinese company that produces Wuling vehicles, SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co.

Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., a major automaker in China, owns 50.1 percent of SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co.

Automotive News follows industry practice by including sales of only majority-owned subsidiaries in an automaker's global total. For instance, sales of Mazda Motor Corp. are not included in Ford Motor Co.'s total because Ford owns 33.4 percent of Mazda.

So they subtracted Wuling-brand sales from GM's reported total, arriving at 8,885,599, making Toyota numero uno. So there GM.