GM, Ford, Toyota December Sales Fall; Honda's Rise (Update8)

By Bill Koenig and Alan Ohnsman


Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. said U.S. auto sales fell in December, capping the worst year in a decade, and predicted that 2008 probably won't be any better.

GM's sales of cars and light trucks dropped 4.4 percent from a year earlier. Ford's total tumbled 9.2 percent, while Toyota's fell 1.7 percent. Toyota moved up to second in annual sales, pushing Ford from the spot it had held since 1931.

Consumers are curtailing spending after being hammered by $3-a-gallon gasoline prices. Housing starts, a barometer for sales of profitable trucks, are in the deepest slump in 16 years.

``It's going to be a brutal year for autos; we're headed into a recession,'' said Pete Hastings, a fixed-income analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Memphis, Tennessee.

Ford said it expects a ``challenging'' U.S. economy in 2008 and Toyota cut its annual sales-growth forecast, after Americans bought 16.1 million cars and light trucks last year, the least since 1998. GM Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner said the U.S. economy may be a ``risk'' to auto sales this year.

Industrywide U.S. sales fell 2.9 percent in December to 1.39 million, and the annual total was down 2.5 percent from 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Among other automakers, Nissan Motor Co. reported a 2.4 percent sales decline for last month, while Chrysler LLC's rose 0.5 percent and Honda Motor Co. had a gain of just 14 vehicles.

This year, industrywide first-half U.S. sales of cars and light trucks will be at an annual rate of 15.2 million to 15.7 million, Ford said in a forecast today.

GM, Ford

GM, the world's largest automaker, said it sold 319,837 cars and light trucks in December, down from 334,501 a year earlier. The Detroit-based automaker said in a statement that its full- year total declined 6 percent to 3.82 million vehicles.

Ford's December sales fell to 212,094 vehicles from 233,621, included reductions of 8.4 percent for cars and 9.5 percent for trucks, the Dearborn, Michigan-based company said in a statement.

For all of 2007, Ford sales slid 12 percent to 2.57 million including heavy-duty trucks, with declines each month except November. Toyota for the year gained 3.1 percent to 2.62 million.

Sales of F-Series large pickups, the best-selling U.S. vehicles, slid 22 percent last month and 13 percent for the year.

Top-Selling SUV

Sales of its Explorer sport-utility vehicles dropped 19 percent in December to 10,887 and 23 percent for the year to 137,817. Ford sold more than 400,000 Explorers in 2002. Last year, Honda sold 219,160 CR-Vs, which passed Explorer as the top- selling SUV.

Ford hadn't finished third or lower in U.S. annual vehicle sales since 1905, according to information compiled by the trade publication Automotive News. The automaker was founded in 1903.

Chrysler said in a statement that its December sales rose to 191,423 cars and light trucks from 190,415. The Auburn Hills, Michigan-based automaker reported a 3.1 percent drop for the year, to 2.08 million vehicles.

Toyota said it sold 224,399 vehicles last month. The decline was mostly from the company's top-selling cars, including the Yaris and Corolla small models and midsize Camry sedan, the Toyota City, Japan-based company said in a statement.

The Toyota Camry was the best-selling car model in the U.S. for the sixth straight year. The company's Prius, the top-selling gasoline-electric hybrid, outsold Ford's Focus to rank eighth in annual volume among cars.

Toyota trimmed the forecast for its 2008 U.S. sales growth to a range of 1 percent to 2 percent, from an estimate of about 3 percent made last month by U.S. sales chief Jim Lentz. Irv Miller, Toyota's U.S. vice president for communications, said in a conference call that the company expects a weaker market than it did before the earlier target.

Honda

Honda, the second-largest Japanese automaker, sold 131,792 vehicles last month, the company's U.S. unit in Torrance, California, said in an e-mailed statement. Gains were led by the Fit hatchback, Accord sedan, Civic small car and the CR-V. Honda's annual sales rose 2.8 percent to a record 1.55 million.

Nissan, Japan's third-biggest automaker, sold 89,555 vehicles in December, Mark McNabb, the company's North American sales chief, said in a phone interview today. The decline came from ``trucks that were pretty much down across the board,'' he said. The Tokyo-based automaker's full-year sales rose 4.8 percent to 1.07 million.

Toyota, Nissan and Honda probably will collectively gain market share for December, said Jesse Toprak, an analyst at Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, California.

Hyundai

December sales for Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's largest automaker, rose 24 percent to 46,487 vehicles from 37,365 a year earlier. The increase was the largest for any major brand and was led a more than doubling of sales of the Sonata sedan to 24,872. The Seoul-based company annual sales rose 2.5 percent to 467,009.

The industrywide monthly decline in December was the ninth of 2007. The annual total for cars and light trucks was the lowest since 15.6 million were sold in 1998. The industry set a record in 2000 with 17.4 million sales.

GM fell 49 cents to $23.92 at 4:22 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, while Ford slid 15 cents to $6.45. Toyota's American depositary receipts rose 44 cents to $106.90.

``It's certainly going to wrap up to be a fairly dismal year as far as vehicle sales have moved along,'' Michael Robinet, an analyst at CSM Worldwide in Northville, Michigan, said in an interview on Bloomberg radio. He also said he expects Toyota will pass GM as the world's largest automaker, after the U.S. company regained the lead in last year's third quarter.

The average price of a gallon of gasoline rose 31 percent for the year to $3.04 on Dec. 31, according to the American Automobile Association. The Reuters/University of Michigan final index of consumer sentiment for December declined to 75.5, the lowest since October 2005.