A General Motors Assembly plant is shown in Arlington, Texas. General Motors Corp, eager to lower wages and staunch the kinds of losses it saw in 2007, said Tuesday it is offering a new round of buyouts to all 74,000 of its United States hourly workers who are represented by the United Auto Workers. GM also reported a US$38.7 billion loss for 2007, the largest annual loss ever for an automotive company.- - AP photos

DETROIT (AP):

NEARLY every major automaker saw its US sales drop in August, but many are seeing signs that the worst slump in recent history may have bottomed out.

Most upbeat were executives from General Motors Corp, which posted a 20.3 per cent sales decline from a year ago but a 31 per cent improvement over July's totals.

Much of the gain came from offering all buyers employee discounts on many models, but Mark LaNeve, GM's vice-president of North American sales, said there's hope that June and July were the trough for US sales.

"We are very encouraged by what we saw in August. It gives us reason to think that we are starting to pull our way out of this," he said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters and industry analysts.

Overall, US sales fell 15.5 per cent compared with August of last year, but rose 10 per cent from July's dismal figures, according to Autodata Corp. The seasonally adjusted annual sales rate for August was 13.7 million, up from 12.5 million in July, the worst month in 16 years.

Chrysler LLC said its US sales fell more than 34 per cent last month, while Ford Motor Company reported a 26.5 per cent decline. Toyota Motor Corp's sales dipped 9.4 per cent, and Honda Motor Co saw a 7.3 per cent slide.

Nissan Motor Company was the only major automaker to report an increase over August 2007: Its sales climbed 13.6 per cent.

But the increase over July buoyed most automakers, with sales executives saying that lower fuel prices were starting to ease consumers' minds. They also reported the market shifting a little bit back towards trucks and sport utility vehicles, driven by incentives and lower gas prices.

Exports strong

Automakers said consumer sentiment was improving, housing price declines and manufacturing production are stabilising, and exports continue to be strong.

"Some bright spots are emerging," said Irv Miller, group vice-president for communications with Toyota, whose sales improved 7.1 per cent from July to August.

Officials at GM and other automakers tempered their remarks by saying that they'll face challenging conditions for the rest of this year and even into 2009, with the housing slump projected to continue and tight credit and leasing combining to knock buyers out of the market.

George Pipas, Ford's top sales analyst, cautioned that higher incentives industrywide helped push August sales.

"I think there are some positives," Pipas said. "But the underlying economic conditions and the credit situation, which have given rise to this summer's low level of sales, still persist. So I think we still have to be careful about popping the champagne cork after a month whose sales were inflated by incentives."

Fuelled by the employee discounts for everyone, which GM extended Wednesday until September 30, the Detroit automaker posted its best sales month of the year in August.

Employee pricing, low-interest financing and other incentives pulled buyers off the fence and into the market last month, and raised pickup truck sales, said Jesse Toprak, executive director of industry analysis for the automotive information site Edmunds.com.

purchases postponed

Many buyers have postponed purchases for the past year, so GM may not see a decline in coming months, he said. Toprak predicted month-over-month sales improvements for the rest of the year, but sales still below last year's levels.

"I think this is the bottom," he said. "I think that we are going to start seeing some steady improvement from here on."

While Chrysler had a huge decline from the year-ago period, it showed a 12.3 per cent gain over July. But compared with August of last year, Chrysler's car sales were down 39 per cent and its truck sales were off 33 per cent.

Ford sales dropped 3.6 per cent compared with July, due in part to its continuing plan to reduce low-profit sales to rental car companies and other fleet buyers, Pipas said. The company said Wednesday that it plans to cut 50,000 more vehicles from its production plan in the second half of the year, reducing its output to 890,000 in the last six months of 2008.

The Dearborn-based automaker said its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury car sales dropped nearly nine per cent in August, while truck sales were off more than 32 per cent from a year earlier.

bright spots

There were some bright spots for Ford. Sales of its Focus small car were up 23 per cent in August, while Escape small SUV sales rose 17 per cent compared with the same month a year ago.

Both Ford and GM reported big inventory reductions in August as they switch to the 2009 model year.

Toyota said its car sales were down 3.4 per cent from August 2007, and trucks were down 17.6 per cent. Sales of the tiny Yaris were up more than 20 per cent for the month, while the Camry mid-size sedan saw sales grow by 3.3 per cent, the company said.

Honda's car sales fell 4.9 per cent and demand for trucks dropped 10.3 per cent.

Nissan said its car sales fell 0.8 per cent but its truck sales climbed 34.8 percent on strong sales of its Frontier, Xterra and Rogue models and the Infiniti EX and FX crossovers.

Unsold 2008 Super Duty pickup trucks sit at a Ford dealership in the south Denver suburb of Littleton, Colorado, on Sunday, May 11. The company has cut North American production of pickups and SUVs as car buyers eyeing record gas prices turn towards more fuel-efficient models.