GM predicts leap in auto sales for '10

NOVI, Mich. — An executive with General Motors said Friday that the company sees U.S. auto sales growing by 2 million next year.

General Motors Co. Vice President Brent Dewar said GM is projecting U.S. sales of 10.5 million vehicles for 2009 and 12.5 million in 2010 as consumer confidence improves.

He said August sales for the Chevrolet brand were strong, but there will be a payback in September. The government's "cash for clunkers" program pulled sales forward from later in the year.

He said the program boosted sales for smaller cars. But he said new product sales such as the Chevrolet Camaro muscle car and Equinox crossover vehicle are continuing to be strong even after the program ended.

Dewar said Chevrolet now makes up 50 percent of GM's global sales but is expected to rise to 60 percent or 65 percent next year as GM winds down its Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer brands.

Susan Docherty, general manager for GM's Buick-GMC-Pontiac brands, said GM is targeting 3 million "free agents" who drive vehicles from discontinued GMbrands or models to keep them as customers.

The company plans to approach them with targeted emails and other messages, learning from its experience phasing out the Oldsmobile brand.

"We do not want to lose one customer," she said.

GM likely will sell out its remaining Pontiacs by the end of the year, far faster than projected, Docherty said. GM expected to keep selling Pontiacs until the third quarter of next year, but will be down to only 15,000 or 16,000 by next week.

GM has stopped making the Pontiac.

A top Ford executive expects U.S. auto sales overall to rise for the first time in more than two years this month, thanks largely to the clunkers program.

Sales may have risen as much as 13 million units on an annualized basis during August, Mark Fields, Ford executive in charge of the Americas, said Friday.

Retail sales at Ford Motor Co. in August have already surpassed last year's levels with a weekend still to go, he said. Ford's sales in July rose 2.4 percent.

"Overall, we thought it was a very, very successful program in jump-starting sales," Fields saidof the clunkers program, which enticed drivers to trade in gas guzzlers by offering big rebates on new, more fuel-efficient cars and trucks.

Automakers are scheduled to report monthly sales Tuesday. Many analysts are forecasting a year-over-year increase for an industry that has taken a beating during the recession, although year-ago levels were already depressed.

The clunkers program, which formally ended Monday, spurred 690,114 new sales at a taxpayer cost of $2.88 billion, according to the Department of Transportation.

Ford was one of the top gainers from the program. The FordFocus compact car and Escape crossover were among the top sellers, though Japanese automakers sold more vehicles than U.S. companies.

Fields estimated that 30 percent to 40 percent of clunkers sales were "truly incremental," meaning that they came from consumers who had no plans previously to buy a car. The rest, he said, were from people already planning to buy a car later on.

Information for this article was contributed by San Strumpf and Bree Fowler of The Associated Press.