Toyota Motor Corporation led 10 of 18 car and truck categories and General Motors Corporation was best in five, putting the world’s two largest automakers at the top of an annual industry quality study.

Honda Motor Company’s main brand fell out of the top 10 and Nissan Motor Company’s improved 22% in the J.D. Power & Associates survey of new-vehicle owners, released yesterday. The industry average was 118 problems per 100 vehicles, one fewer than last year. The market-research company dropped corporate rankings, which Toyota had headed for seven straight years.

“This continues the trend of recent years with the Japanese staying on top but the American producers breathing down their neck,” said an auto analyst at New York-based Burnham Securities, David Healy. “GM showed up so well that you can’t blame their current problems on quality.”

Toyota’s Lexus again led all 36 brands and had the top vehicle in all five luxury categories. GM’s Hummer rose to a tie for 10th from last in 2004, and along with the company’s Buick, Cadillac, and GMC brands did better than average. Automakers watch the 19-year-old study from Westlake Village, Calif.-based J.D. Power because it can sway buyers.

Nissan’s main brand improved to 120 problems per 100 vehicles from 154. The largest brands for Toyota, Honda, and Nissan each had better scores than GM’s Chevrolet and Ford Motor Company’s Ford, the biggest sellers for the U.S.-based automakers.

Toyota, Nissan, and Honda have increased U.S. sales and market share this year, as GM and Ford have declined. The American automakers cut North American production because of lower sales, contributing to a first-quarter loss at Detroit-based GM and a profit drop at Ford.

Lexus, the top brand, had 81 problems per 100 vehicles in the first 90 days after purchase, an improvement from 87 a year earlier, J.D. Power said. Toyota’s namesake brand worsened to 105 from 104 and its Scion improved to 134 from 158.

Ford’s Jaguar was second among brands with 88, followed by Bayerische Motoren Werke AG’s BMW with 95, Buick, with 100 and Cadillac and DaimlerChrysler AG’s Mercedes-Benz with 104 each.

Jaguar’s showing “was not magic, it was hard work,” Ford’s president, Jim Padilla, said at an employee meeting yesterday in Dearborn, Mich., where the company is based.

Tokyo-based Honda’s namesake brand worsened to 112 from 99 and fell to 12th from fourth. Honda introduced a redesigned Odyssey minivan and hybrid Civic and Accord cars.

“Obviously, we were not satisfied with the results and we’re working to resolve a number of issues in the surveys,” a Honda spokesman, Yuzuru Matsuno, said. “We found the drop in Honda’s ranking was mostly related to the Odyssey launch.”

Ford’s namesake brand improved to 127 from 130 last year. Daimler-Chrysler’s best U.S.-based brand was Jeep at 120, an improvement from 136. Chrysler worsened to 121 from 120,and Dodge went to 130 from 121.

GM’s Chevrolet worsened to 127 from 119.

Quality scores typically worsen when an automaker introduces new products, and improve the longer a vehicle continues without major changes, a J.D. Power spokesman, Mike Greywitt, said. For example, Tokyo-based Nissan’s score this year rebounded from 2004, when new models such as the Titan pickup truck and the Quest minivan hurt its results.

Of 15 brands that did better than average in this year’s survey, four were from GM, the world’s largest automaker by sales volume, and two were from no.2 Toyota. Honda and Ford also had two each, and there was one each from BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Nissan, Hyundai Motor Company, and Volkswagen.

The rankings “will have a lasting impact on the perception in the marketplace,” GM’s North America vice president of quality, Kevin Williams, said. “It’s not just GM saying this, these are customers.”