Toyota is forecast this year to surpass ailing US giant General Motors Corp in both sales and output for the crown of the largest automaker.

Vice President Akio Toyoda, a descendant of the family that founded the company as a textile maker in the 19th century, said the success would not go to its head.

"There is a telling episode. One dentist claims he's the world's best on his entrance sign. A second one claims he's the nation's best, and a third claims he's the best in town," Toyoda told Saturday's Nikkei business daily.

"Patients opted for the best in town. I repeatedly say, let's become the best automaker in town."

Toyoda, the family's top-ranking member involved in day-to-day operations at Toyota, said the company's priorities remained reducing costs and quality control.

"The way we do business will not likely change much," he said.

Toyota was the pioneer of environmentally-friendly hybrids, which proved a major hit in the United States whose own automakers have spent the last decade focusing on gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles.

But Toyota has been careful not to gloat, fearing a protectionist backlash of the type seen in the 1980s when Japanese companies first made major inroads in the United States.

Toyota announced Tuesday it would build its eighth North American plant in the southern US state of Mississippi, creating some 2,000 new jobs at a time that the Detroit automakers are slashing their workforce.