Auto sales lackluster for US giants

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DETROIT ??” A declining U.S. auto market, big sales last year and large incentives on Toyota pickup trucks all contributed to a lackluster June for Detroit's three automakers and especially for General Motors Corp.

GM saw its sales plummet 21.3 percent compared with June of last year, while Ford Motor Co. sales dropped 8.1 percent and Chrysler Group saw a decline of 1.4 percent. But it was the same old story for the Japan-based automakers, all of which showed impressive gains led by Nissan's 22.7 percent increase. Toyota Motor Corp. saw a 10.2 percent gain, while Honda Motor Co. rose 11.5 percent.

Ford barely managed to hold off Toyota as the nation's No. 2 auto seller in June and for the first half of the year, but Toyota narrowed the gap from

319,208 vehicles in the first half of last year to only 39,558 in the first half of 2007, according to Autodata Corp.

GM said it sold 320,668 passenger vehicles in June, compared with 407,513 during the same period last year. The declines for GM and Ford and came as they continued to wean themselves from low-profit sales to rental car companies.

Paul Ballew, GM's executive director of global market and industry analysis, blamed the company's sales decline on a planned reduction in fleet sales and a tough comparison with June of last year, when the company offered a big 72-hour sale. Also, he said GM was surprised that Toyota offered zero-percent financing for 60 months, which cut into GM's pickup truck sales. He said the company may wind up altering its strategy of offering fewer incentives on pickups. "If we have to make some changes in our incentive play, we will, because we are not going to cede ground in a category that we feel we're best in class in," he said.

Toyota said it sold 245,739 Toyota and Lexus vehicles in June, compared with 223,018 a year ago. For the first half of the year, it sold 725,219 vehicles.

Industrywide U.S. sales in June fell 3 percent to 1.4 million from 1.5 million in June 2006, according to Autodata.

For the first half of the year, sales dropped 1.5 percent from 8.2 million from 8.4 million during the same period last year.

Source: [url=http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_6296710]Inside Bay Area[/url]